Files
traefik-llmgateway/README.md
T
lukaszraczylo 3e1f188426 fix(routes): preserve response bytes and close remaining test gaps
Replace the alias-echo rewrite on the Anthropic passthrough branch
with a byte-preserving field replacement. The prior version decoded
the response into a Go map and re-marshaled it. This silently
corrupted a JSON integer beyond float64's exact range. It also
rewrote 1.0 to 1, HTML-escaped angle brackets and ampersands, and
re-sorted every key. A tool_use block's "input" is arbitrary
model-generated JSON. A long numeric id inside tool arguments could
be silently corrupted on a route documented as passthrough.
rewriteModelField now walks the response with a JSON decoder and
copies every field but "model" as raw bytes.

Add a test with a 20-digit integer, a 1.0 float, and a literal "<"
character inside tool_use input. It asserts the response is
byte-identical to the source apart from the model field.

Add a negative test for the anthropic-beta header allowlist. It
asserts Authorization and Cookie never reach the upstream. It also
asserts the upstream sees exactly one x-api-key value: the gateway's
own key, never the client's. A single Get() call could miss a second,
leaked value, since Set() and Add() interact in a way a naive check
would not catch. The test checks the Values() length explicitly.

Add a test case for the native passthrough route's prompt-cache
billing. It fails if cache_creation_input_tokens or
cache_read_input_tokens drop out of the billed prompt count. This
closes a production billing change that previously carried no
coverage at all.

Decouple response delivery from usage extraction on the passthrough
branch. A response body read failure, or a malformed usage field, no
longer both discard the response and misreport the failure as an
upstream connection error. A read failure still returns an error, now
correctly classified as a translation failure. A malformed usage
field no longer blocks the response at all: the client still gets
it, and the existing zero-usage estimate takes over for accounting.

Return the adapter's own usage value on a chatCompletion error in the
translated path, instead of discarding it. This has no effect while
streaming stays rejected up front. It prevents the same critical bug
from resurfacing once streaming support lands.

Normalize tool_result content to a plain string before applying the
error prefix. The prior version only prefixed a Go string. Anthropic's
array content form, which Claude Code sends, lost the is_error signal
entirely. Absent content now becomes an empty string instead of the
JSON null OpenAI rejects.

Treat "stream": null the same as an absent key. The prior fix for a
non-boolean stream value also rejected null. An SDK that serializes an
unset optional field as null must still get an ordinary non-streaming
response.

Drop a yaegi-check assertion that could not fail. The fixture
configures no cache, so the header it checked was never set regardless
of what the code under test did. A mutation pass confirmed this: it
deleted the line the assertion was meant to guard, and make
yaegi-check still reported OK.

Document that this route now intercepts POST /v1/messages
unconditionally, even under passthroughUnknown, where it previously
fell through to the next handler. Add the note to both the new README
section and Known limitations. Correct the passthrough table's claim
about response bytes to describe the actual guarantee.
2026-08-22 23:45:34 +01:00

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# traefik-llmgateway
A [Traefik](https://traefik.io) middleware plugin that turns a Traefik
instance into a multi-provider LLM gateway: one endpoint, several upstream
providers, per-user API keys organised into groups, request/token/cost
limits, and a registry plus authenticated proxy for in-cluster MCP servers
and A2A agents.
The plugin is self-contained. It has no sidecar and no companion service.
It runs as a [Yaegi](https://github.com/traefik/yaegi)-interpreted Go
module, the same way [`traefikoidc`](https://github.com/lukaszraczylo/traefikoidc)
does, configured per-middleware in Traefik's dynamic configuration.
**Status:** stable at **v1.0**. Configuration keys, endpoints, and
behaviour now follow semver — breaking changes wait for a major release
instead of landing between patches, as they could before 1.0.
Feature-complete, all gates green (unit tests, `-race`, `yaegi-check`,
integration), and published to the Traefik Plugin Catalog. One behaviour
worth knowing before you deploy: [streaming is delivered buffered rather
than token-by-token](#known-limitations) under the current Traefik + Yaegi
combination.
## What it is
- A unified, OpenAI-compatible surface (`/v1/chat/completions`,
`/v1/embeddings`, `/v1/models`) that translates requests and responses to
and from Anthropic's and Google Gemini's own wire formats, so any
OpenAI-SDK-compatible client can talk to all three providers through one
API shape.
- An Anthropic-compatible surface (`POST /v1/messages`) for Anthropic SDK
clients — including Claude Code — to talk to any configured provider in
Anthropic's own Messages API shape; see [Anthropic Messages API
(`/v1/messages`)](#anthropic-messages-api-v1messages).
- Native passthrough per provider (`/{provider}/...`) for callers that want
a provider's own wire format untouched, with the gateway injecting that
provider's own API key and still enforcing auth and limits.
- Per-user API keys, organised into groups that control which providers,
models, MCP servers, and agents a user can reach, plus request/token/cost
limits enforced per user and per group.
- A registry and authenticated reverse proxy for MCP servers and A2A
agents, so those can sit behind the same gateway, the same auth, and the
same group-based visibility rules as the LLM traffic.
<details>
<summary><b>Request flow diagram</b> (mermaid — renders on GitHub)</summary>
```mermaid
flowchart LR
Req["incoming request"] --> Route{"route<br/>ServeHTTP: path+method dispatch"}
Route -->|"a recognized route:<br/>/v1/models, /v1/chat/completions,<br/>/v1/embeddings, /v1/mcp/servers,<br/>/v1/agents, /mcp (federated),<br/>/mcp/name/...,<br/>/a2a/name/..., or /providerName/...<br/>for a known provider"| Auth["auth (per branch)<br/>identify(): key digest lookup"]
Route -->|"no route matches"| Fallback["passthroughUnknown ? next : 404<br/>never calls identify()"]
Auth -->|"no match"| E401["401 authentication_error"]
Auth -->|"user, group"| Branch{"branch"}
Branch --> Models["GET /v1/models"]
Branch --> Unified["POST /v1/chat/completions<br/>POST /v1/embeddings"]
Branch --> Registry["GET /v1/mcp/servers, /v1/agents"]
Branch --> MCP["MCP/A2A proxy"]
Branch --> Federated["POST /mcp (federated JSON-RPC)"]
Branch --> Passthrough["native passthrough"]
Unified --> Resolve["resolve model<br/>registry.resolve"]
Resolve -->|"unknown/denied"| E404["404 / 403"]
Resolve --> Limit1["limiter.checkAndCount"]
MCP --> Limit2["limiter.checkAndCount"]
Federated --> Limit4["limiter.checkAndCount"]
Passthrough --> Limit3["limiter.checkAndCount"]
Limit1 -->|"over budget"| E429["429 / 503"]
Limit2 -->|"over budget"| E429
Limit3 -->|"over budget"| E429
Limit4 -->|"over budget"| E429
Limit1 --> Exec["execute: translate + call adapter"]
Limit2 --> ExecProxy["execute: reverse proxy"]
Limit3 --> ExecProxy
Limit4 --> ExecFed["execute: answer locally, or<br/>JSON-RPC call(s) to backend server(s)"]
Exec --> Account["account: usage, cost"]
Account --> Resp["respond to client"]
ExecProxy --> Resp
ExecFed --> Resp
Models --> Resp
Registry --> Resp
```
</details>
Every route the plugin recognises is handled entirely inside the
middleware — `next` (the router's configured backing service) is only
reached when a request matches none of the plugin's routes and
`passthroughUnknown` is `true`.
## Quickstart
### Static configuration
The plugin is in the Traefik Plugin Catalog, so the catalog form of static
configuration works:
```yaml
experimental:
plugins:
llmgateway:
moduleName: github.com/lukaszraczylo/traefik-llmgateway
version: v1.0.3
```
You can also load it as a
[`localPlugin`](https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/plugins/#defining-a-local-plugin),
mounting this repository's source into the Traefik container at
`<plugins-local dir>/src/github.com/lukaszraczylo/traefik-llmgateway`.
That form tracks a branch instead of a pinned release, which suits
development and any deployment that wants to follow `main` — see
[`examples/docker-compose.yml`](examples/docker-compose.yml) for a
working, tested setup that does exactly this:
```yaml
# traefik static config (traefik.yml / --experimental.localPlugins.*)
experimental:
localPlugins:
llmgateway:
moduleName: github.com/lukaszraczylo/traefik-llmgateway
```
The catalog form above pins a released tag instead, which is the better
default for production: a pod restart cannot pick up a change you have not
deployed on purpose.
### Dynamic configuration
A minimal single-provider middleware, one group, one user:
```yaml
http:
middlewares:
llmgateway:
plugin:
llmgateway:
providers:
openai:
type: openai
apiKey: "env:OPENAI_API_KEY"
models: ["gpt-5-mini", "gpt-4o"]
groups:
default:
providers: [] # empty = every configured provider is allowed
users:
inline:
- name: alice
group: default
apiKey: "env:LLMGW_KEY_ALICE"
```
> Write an "allow everything" group as `providers: []` (an explicit empty
> list), not a bare `{}`. See the note at the top of
> [`examples/kubernetes.yaml`](examples/kubernetes.yaml) — confirmed
> against Traefik's **file provider**, twice, with this exact plugin build:
> a bare `default: {}` fails plugin construction with
> `expected a map, got 'string'`; `default: {providers: []}` loads cleanly.
> Not tested against the Docker/ECS label providers or the Kubernetes CRD
> provider — no claim either way for those. An explicit empty list means
> the same thing as an empty object (all values allowed), so writing it
> this way costs nothing even where the bug does not apply.
Attach the middleware to a router the same way as any other Traefik
middleware. The router's backing service is never actually reached unless
`passthroughUnknown: true` and the request matches none of the plugin's
routes — a small dummy service (`traefik/whoami`, or any always-up
internal service) is enough.
Call it:
```sh
curl http://llm.example.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $LLMGW_KEY_ALICE" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"gpt-5-mini","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}]}'
```
## Full configuration reference
Every limit or visibility list follows one convention throughout: **empty
or omitted means unlimited / all**. Field names below are the exact JSON
keys the plugin's Go structs expect (`llmgateway.go`); Traefik's dynamic
config accepts them as YAML, which decodes to the same JSON shape.
### `Config` (top level)
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `providers` | `map[string]ProviderConfig` | — | Required, at least one entry, or the plugin refuses to construct. |
| `groups` | `map[string]GroupConfig` | `{}` | Optional. A user references one group by name; an unknown reference is a construction error. |
| `pricing` | `map[string]ModelPricing` | `{}` | Per-model USD/1M-token overrides, keyed by model id (bare or `provider/model`). Merged over, not replacing, the built-in table (`pricing.go`). |
| `mcpServers` | `map[string]TargetConfig` | `{}` | MCP server registry; see [MCP/A2A](#mcp-and-a2a). |
| `agents` | `map[string]AgentConfig` | `{}` | A2A agent registry; see [MCP/A2A](#mcp-and-a2a). |
| `users` | `UsersConfig` | — | Inline and/or file-backed API-key holders. With none configured, every request is unauthenticated and gets 401. |
| `redis` | `RedisConfig` | — | Distributed limit-counter backend. Omitted means in-process counters only (per-replica, approximate across multiple Traefik instances). |
| `retry` | `RetryConfig` | `{}` (disabled) | Same-provider retry for transient upstream failures — see [Retry](#retry). Omitted or `enabled: false` means no retry: every request makes exactly one upstream attempt, byte-identical to a gateway built before this field existed. |
| `cache` | `CacheConfig` | `{}` (disabled) | Opt-in Redis-backed response cache for unified non-streaming chat/embeddings — see [Caching](#caching). Omitted or `enabled: false` means no caching, byte-identical to a gateway built before this field existed. |
| `admin` | `*AdminConfig` | `nil` (disabled) | Read-only admin dashboard — see [Admin](#admin). `nil` or `enabled: false` means the `/admin*` routes are not registered at all. |
| `modelAliases` | `map[string]string` | `{}` | Operator-defined alias id → target model id — see [Model aliases](#model-aliases). Omitted or empty means no aliases, byte-identical to a gateway built before this field existed. |
| `modelMeta` | `map[string]*ModelMetaConfig` | `{}` | Per-model context-window and cost overrides, keyed by exact `provider/model` or a bare model id — see [Model metadata](#model-metadata). Omitted or empty means no overrides; every model's metadata still resolves through discovery and the built-in table. |
| `passthroughUnknown` | `bool` | `false` | `false`: a request matching none of the plugin's routes gets a 404 JSON envelope. `true`: it falls through to the router's own backing service. **Does not cover the three media routes** — see the upgrade note below. |
| `maxInFlightBodyRequests` | `int` | `0` (self-tuned) | Caps how many unified/media requests may concurrently be inside their own request-body read+decode step — see [Body-admission limit](#body-admission-limit). `0` self-tunes from the host's own `GOMAXPROCS`; a positive value pins an exact cap instead, clamped to a maximum of 10,000. |
> **Upgrading from v0.1**: `POST /v1/images/generations`, `POST
> /v1/audio/speech`, and `POST /v1/audio/transcriptions` are now handled by
> the gateway itself, unconditionally — see [Image and audio
> endpoints](#image-and-audio-endpoints). They no longer fall through to
> `next` even when `passthroughUnknown: true`. A v0.1 deployment that
> served its own backend on any of these three exact paths, relying on
> passthrough to reach it, must move that backend to a different path
> before upgrading to v0.2 — the gateway now intercepts these paths first,
> every time.
Provider, `mcpServers`, and `agents` map **keys** (names) must match
`^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+$` and must not be `v1`, `mcp`, or `a2a` — those names are
reserved because they would shadow the gateway's own fixed routes
(`/v1/...`, `/mcp/{name}/...`, `/a2a/{name}/...`); a name that collides is
a construction error, not a silently-unreachable provider. A `nil` map
*value* under any of `providers`, `groups`, `mcpServers`, or `agents` is
also a construction error, never a panic (`providers.go`, `mcp_a2a.go`,
`auth.go`).
### `ProviderConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `type` | `string` | — | Required: `openai`, `anthropic`, or `gemini`. `openai` also serves any OpenAI-wire-compatible provider (Grok, DeepSeek, a local vLLM/Ollama gateway, ...) via `baseUrl`. |
| `baseUrl` | `string` | Per type: `https://api.openai.com`, `https://api.anthropic.com`, `https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com` | Trailing slash trimmed. |
| `apiKey` | `string` | — | Secret form: literal, `env:VAR`, or `file:/path` — see [Secret forms](#secret-forms). An `openai`-type provider resolving to an empty key is a valid **keyless** upstream (no `Authorization` header sent) — useful for a local model server with no auth. `anthropic` and `gemini` reject an empty resolved key at construction. |
| `discoveryInterval` | `string` (Go duration) | `1h` | Only meaningful when `discovery: true`. Invalid duration string is a construction error. |
| `models` | `[]string` | `[]` | Explicit model ids this provider serves. Combined with any discovered ids. |
| `discovery` | `bool` | `false` | Pull the provider's own model-listing endpoint at startup and on `discoveryInterval`. A discovery failure is logged and non-fatal; construction still succeeds on `models` alone. |
| `metadataPath` | `string` | `""` (no metadata capture) | Only read by `openai`-type providers. A second endpoint, fetched alongside `discovery`, that reports per-model context length — for example `/api/v0/models` on an LM Studio server. Must start with `/` when set (checked at construction). See [Model metadata](#model-metadata). |
| `passthrough` | `*bool` | `nil` (enabled) | `nil` or `true`: this provider's native passthrough route (`/{name}/...`) stays reachable, unchanged from before this field existed. `false`: the route is disabled — `ServeHTTP` treats it exactly like an unconfigured provider name, falling through to the ordinary unknown-route 404 without even reaching authentication. Does not affect the MCP/A2A target proxy, which has its own routing prefix. |
### `GroupConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `limits` | `*LimitsConfig` | `nil` (unlimited) | |
| `providers` | `[]string` | `[]` (all) | Glob-matched (`path.Match`) against a provider's configured name. |
| `models` | `[]string` | `[]` (all) | Glob-matched, exactly as given — no automatic `provider/` prefix stripping. Both the bare and provider-prefixed forms of a model id are checked, so a pattern like `gpt-*` matches a client request for either `gpt-5-mini` or `openai/gpt-5-mini`. |
| `cache` | `*bool` | `nil` (inherit) | Overrides the top-level `cache.enabled` setting for this group's requests — see [Caching](#caching). `nil` inherits the global setting; `false` opts the group out even when caching is globally on; `true` opts the group in, but only when the top-level `cache` block is actually configured (a construction error otherwise — there is nothing to inherit `ttl`/`maxBodyBytes` from). |
| `cacheTTL` | `string` | `""` (inherit) | Sets the TTL written when this group's own request populates a cache entry — see [Caching](#caching). It does not scope entries to a group: cache entries are shared across every group that can reach the model (see the Caching section's "User identity is not part of the key" note, which applies to group identity too), so this controls a write's TTL only, not which group can read the entry. Empty inherits the global TTL. A set value must be a valid, positive Go duration (`"30s"`, `"5m"`), and requires the top-level `cache` block to be configured — a construction error otherwise, the same "nothing to inherit from" reasoning as `cache: true` above. |
| `mcpServers` | `[]string` | `[]` (all) | Glob-matched against a configured MCP server name. |
| `agents` | `[]string` | `[]` (all) | Glob-matched against a configured agent name. |
| `passthroughPaths` | `[]string` | `[]` (all) | Restricts which REST path this group's **native passthrough** requests may address — glob-matched (`path.Match`) against the path segment after the provider name (e.g. `v1/files` for a request to `/openai/v1/files`). Empty is allow-all, matching every other field on this table — **not** `["*"]`: `path.Match`'s `*` does not cross `/`, so a literal `["*"]` pattern denies every multi-segment `rest` (almost all real passthrough traffic). Leave this unset to actually allow everything. See [Unified vs. passthrough](#unified-vs-passthrough) for the related model-authorization rule. |
### `LimitsConfig`
All six fields default to `0` (unlimited). A negative count, or a cost
that is negative, `NaN`, or `±Inf`, is a construction error.
| Field | Type | Window |
|---|---|---|
| `requestsPerMinute` | `int64` | Fixed 1-minute window, UTC. |
| `requestsPerDay` | `int64` | Fixed calendar-day window, UTC midnight to midnight. |
| `tokensPerDay` | `int64` | Fixed calendar-day window, UTC. |
| `tokensPerMonth` | `int64` | Fixed calendar-month window, UTC. |
| `costPerDayUSD` | `float64` | Fixed calendar-day window, UTC. |
| `costPerMonthUSD` | `float64` | Fixed calendar-month window, UTC. |
Every window enforces correctly on the in-process fallback too, not only Redis —
see [Limits and accounting](#limits-and-accounting)'s "Fallback" bullet for the
retention floor that keeps `tokensPerMonth`/`costPerMonthUSD` a true calendar-month
budget rather than a rolling one when Redis is absent or down.
A user's own `limits`, when set, are checked **in addition to** their
group's limits, not instead of them — a request is refused the moment it
breaches whichever of the two is tighter. A user with no `limits` of their
own is governed purely by their group's — see
[UserConfig](#userconfig).
### `UsersConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `file` | `string` | — | Path to a JSON users file, merged over `inline` and hot-reloaded — see [Users file](#users-file-format). |
| `inline` | `[]UserConfig` | `[]` | Resolved once at plugin construction. |
### `UserConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `name` | `string` | — | Required. |
| `group` | `string` | — | Required; must reference a configured group, or construction fails. |
| `apiKey` | `string` | — | Secret form (see [Secret forms](#secret-forms)); must resolve non-empty and unique across every inline **and** file-sourced user. |
| `limits` | `*LimitsConfig` | `nil` (governed by group's limits alone) | When set, enforced alongside — not instead of — the group's own limits; both scopes are checked, and the request is refused by whichever is breached first. |
| `admin` | `bool` | `false` | Grants access to the read-only admin dashboard — see [Admin](#admin). Works the same for an inline or a file-sourced user. An admin user is otherwise ordinary: their own keys, group, and limits still apply, including to the admin routes themselves. |
### `RedisConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `address` | `string` | — | Required when the `redis` block is present at all. `host:port`, RESP protocol — works against Redis, [Valkey](https://valkey.io), or [Dragonfly](https://www.dragonflydb.io). |
| `password` | `string` | `""` (no `AUTH`) | Secret form. |
| `db` | `int` | `0` | Must be `≥ 0`. Sent via `SELECT` on every new connection. |
| `failOpen` | `*bool` | `true` | `true`: a Redis error switches that operation to the in-process fallback store and logs (rate-limited to once per 30s). `false`: a Redis error returns 503 instead of enforcing against a non-shared fallback. |
### `RetryConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `enabled` | `bool` | `false` | `false`: no retry, one upstream attempt per request. `true`: retry per [Retry](#retry) below. |
| `attempts` | `int` | `1` | Retries performed **after** the first try, not the total try count. `1` (default) allows one retry — two tries total. The maximum, `3`, allows three retries — four tries total. A value outside `1`-`3` is a construction error. |
| `backoff` | `string` (Go duration) | `250ms` | Base wait before the first retry; doubles on each further retry, capped at 2s per wait. Invalid duration string is a construction error. |
### `CacheConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `enabled` | `bool` | `false` | `false`: no caching, `/v1/chat/completions` and `/v1/embeddings` behave byte-identically to a gateway built before this field existed. `true`: caching per [Caching](#caching) below — requires `redis` to be configured too, or it silently stays off (one warning logged). |
| `ttl` | `string` (Go duration) | `5m` | How long a cached response stays valid. Invalid duration string is a construction error. |
| `maxBodyBytes` | `int` | `1048576` (1MiB) | Largest response body still eligible for caching; a larger one is skipped (never stored, never an error). Maximum accepted value is `8388608` (8MiB) — above that is a construction error. |
### `AdminConfig`
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `enabled` | `bool` | `false` | `false`: the `/admin*` routes are not registered at all — a request to any of them falls through to the plugin's existing 404/`passthroughUnknown` handling like any other unrecognized path. `true`: the read-only dashboard per [Admin](#admin) below. |
### `ModelPricing`
| Field | Type | Semantics |
|---|---|---|
| `inputPerM` | `float64` | USD per 1,000,000 input/prompt tokens. |
| `outputPerM` | `float64` | USD per 1,000,000 output/completion tokens. |
### `ModelMetaConfig` (a `modelMeta` entry)
Overrides one model's **context window and per-token cost for display**
— see [Model metadata](#model-metadata). Distinct from `ModelPricing`
above, which drives request-cost **accounting**: `modelMeta` never
changes what a request is billed.
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `contextTokens` | `int` | `0` (not overridden) | A value of `0` falls through to the next layer (discovery, then the built-in table) instead of overriding with an unknown value. Must not be negative. |
| `inputCostPerMTokMicroUsd` | `int64` | `0` (not overridden) | Input cost per 1,000,000 tokens, in micro-USD (1 USD = 1,000,000). `0` falls through to the next layer unless `free` is set. Must not be negative. |
| `outputCostPerMTokMicroUsd` | `int64` | `0` (not overridden) | Output cost per 1,000,000 tokens, in micro-USD. Same fallthrough rule as `inputCostPerMTokMicroUsd`. |
| `free` | `bool` | `false` | `true` sets both cost fields to an explicit, known zero — distinct from leaving them at `0`, which means "not overridden here, keep looking." Rejected at construction when combined with a non-zero cost field (contradictory). |
### `TargetConfig` (an `mcpServers` entry)
| Field | Type | Semantics |
|---|---|---|
| `url` | `string` | Required; must parse with an `http` or `https` scheme, checked at construction. |
### `AgentConfig` (an `agents` entry)
| Field | Type | Default | Semantics |
|---|---|---|---|
| `url` | `string` | — | Required; same URL validation as `TargetConfig`. |
| `card` | `string` | `/.well-known/agent-card.json` | Path appended to the agent's gateway-relative proxy URL for its A2A agent-card listing. |
### Secret forms
Every `apiKey`/`password` field accepts one of three forms
(`secrets.go`):
- **Literal** — the value itself, used as-is. Fine for local/dev; avoid for
anything real.
- **`env:VAR`** — read from environment variable `VAR` on the Traefik
process. Errors if unset or empty.
- **`file:/path`** — read from a file, trimmed of surrounding whitespace.
Errors if unreadable or the trimmed content is empty.
Provider keys, Redis's password, and inline users' keys are resolved
**once**, at plugin construction. A file-sourced user's `apiKey` is
re-resolved on every hot reload (see below), so it can use `env:`/`file:`
forms too and pick up a rotated value without a Traefik restart.
### Users file format
One JSON object, one `users` array, mounted from a single Kubernetes
Secret (`users_file.go`):
```json
{
"users": [
{"name": "alice", "group": "engineering", "apiKey": "sk-llmgw-..."},
{"name": "bob", "group": "general", "apiKey": "env:LLMGW_KEY_BOB", "limits": {"requestsPerDay": 100}}
]
}
```
A file user with the same `name` as an inline user overrides it (the
inline entry is dropped from the merged set). Hot reload polls the file's
mtime, throttled to once per 5 seconds on the request path, and is
best-effort: a reload already in progress is skipped rather than
serialising every concurrent request behind it, so a change lands within a
few request-driven checks, not necessarily on the very next one. A
reload's own error (unreadable file, malformed JSON, a user referencing an
unknown group, a duplicate key) is logged and the last good user set is
kept — a bad edit to the file never breaks already-authenticated traffic.
## Model routing
- A model id in **`provider/model`** form resolves directly against that
provider, but only when the part before the slash names an actually
configured provider. Any other id — including one that merely contains a
slash, such as an upstream's own `uni/deepseek-v4-flash-0731` naming — is
treated as a single **bare** id.
- A bare id resolves against the first configured provider, in sorted
provider-name order, whose known model set (explicit `models` plus any
discovered ids) contains it. When more than one provider knows the same
bare id, the sorted-first provider wins it and the gateway logs a
collision warning once per id; every provider's copy stays reachable
through the explicit `provider/model` form regardless of who won the
bare id, and `GET /v1/models` lists both the bare (winner's) form and
every `provider/model` form.
- **On the unified routes** (`modelRegistry.resolve`, used by
`/v1/chat/completions`, `/v1/embeddings`, and the three media
endpoints), authorization requires both `group.allowsModel` and
`group.allowsProvider` for the resolved provider — a model that exists
but the caller's group cannot reach returns 403, distinct from a model no
configured provider knows at all (404). Native passthrough
(`/{provider}/...`) always checks `group.allowsProvider`, and additionally
checks `group.allowsModel` — against a `model` field peeked from the
request body — whenever the group's `models` list is non-empty; see
[Native passthrough model authorization](#native-passthrough-model-authorization)
and the authorization row in [Unified vs.
passthrough](#unified-vs-passthrough).
- **Discovery**: `GET {baseUrl}/v1/models` for an `openai`-type provider,
`GET {baseUrl}/v1/models` for `anthropic`, `GET {baseUrl}/v1beta/models`
for `gemini`. Runs once at plugin construction (bounded to 5s per
provider) and again on `discoveryInterval` in the background. A failed
refresh is logged and keeps the provider's last-known discovered set —
**stale-while-error**, never an empty list just because one refresh
attempt failed.
## Model aliases
Operator-defined indirection: a client-facing alias id that resolves to a
real target model id. `modelAliases` is empty by default, and an empty map
changes nothing about model resolution — this is purely additive.
```yaml
http:
middlewares:
llmgateway:
plugin:
llmgateway:
# ... providers, groups, users unchanged ...
modelAliases:
# Client-facing name -> real target. The target can itself be
# bare ("gpt-5-mini") or provider-prefixed
# ("anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5"); either resolves through the
# normal rules in [Model routing](#model-routing) above.
aliased/coding: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5"
aliased/fast: "gpt-5-mini"
```
- **Swapping the underlying model**: point an alias at a different target
and let Traefik's dynamic-config reload apply it — no gateway restart,
no client-side change. A client that has always addressed
`aliased/coding` keeps working unmodified after the operator moves that
alias to a newer model.
- **Precedence**: an EXACT alias match wins resolution before any other
rule, including `provider/model` prefix splitting — checked first in
`modelRegistry.resolve`. The target then resolves through the same
rules as any other id (bare, `provider/model`, or a discovered id).
Because of this, an alias whose id contains a `/` is rejected at
construction if the part before the `/` names an actually configured
provider (it would be shadowed by prefix resolution) — see the
validation rules below.
- **Authorization**: a group may use an alias when its `models` glob
matches the **alias name itself**, OR when it already grants access to
the **resolved target** — either is enough. `providers` still gates the
target's own provider as usual.
- **Validation at construction** (a bad alias config fails the same way a
bad provider config does — no gateway starts with a broken alias
table):
- the alias must be non-empty and contain no control characters;
- when the alias contains `/`, its prefix must not name a configured
provider (would be shadowed by prefix resolution);
- the alias must not equal an explicit `models` entry of any provider
(ambiguous — which one wins?);
- the target must not itself be another alias (no alias chains);
- the target must not be empty.
A target naming a model that is not yet known (awaiting a provider's
first discovery fetch, or simply never configured) is accepted at
construction — it resolves lazily. An unresolvable target at request
time returns 404 with a message naming both the alias and the missing
target. A target that is later discovered and collides with an
already-configured alias id is not a construction error either — the
alias always wins that resolution, and the gateway logs one warning
per such id.
- **`GET /v1/models` listing**: every alias the caller's group may use is
listed as a model object alongside real models — `id` is the alias,
`owned_by` is the target's resolved provider name. An alias whose
target does not resolve yet is omitted from the listing until it does.
- **Echo behavior**: exactly like the existing provider-prefix alias echo
(`__alias`, [Unified vs. passthrough](#unified-vs-passthrough)) —
`anthropic`- and `gemini`-type targets build their own response
envelope and echo the client's exact alias string back in its `model`
field. An `openai`-type target's response is a **verbatim passthrough**
of the upstream body, so its `model` field carries whatever the
upstream itself returned (typically the bare upstream model id) —
**not** the alias — the same documented v0.1 passthrough asymmetry,
unchanged by this feature.
- **Applies everywhere a model routes**: unified chat and embeddings,
`/v1/images/generations`, `/v1/audio/speech`, and
`/v1/audio/transcriptions` (including its multipart rewrite — the
upstream `model` field receives the resolved target's own upstream id,
never the alias, exactly like a provider-prefixed id already does).
- **Admin overview**: `GET /admin/api/overview` includes an `aliases`
array (`{alias, target}`, sorted by alias) — see [Admin](#admin). No
secrets involved.
## Model metadata
Per-model context window and per-token cost, resolved for display —
`GET /v1/models` and the admin dashboard show what an operator or client
actually knows about a model, without inventing a number nobody
configured or reported. `modelMeta` (config overrides) is a **separate**
config surface from `pricing` (request-cost accounting, see
[`ModelPricing`](#modelpricing)) — the two never affect each other.
Context and cost each resolve through their own layer stack
(`modelmeta.go`'s `resolveModelMeta`), most specific first:
1. **Context**: a `modelMeta` config override → a provider's own
discovery-captured context (`metadataPath`, below) → the built-in
table → unknown.
2. **Cost**: a `modelMeta` config override (or its `free: true`) → a
`":free"`-suffixed model id (see the free-tier note below) → the
built-in table → unknown.
A field genuinely unknown at every layer stays unknown — never invented
— and is omitted from `GET /v1/models`, not sent as a misleading zero.
```yaml
http:
middlewares:
llmgateway:
plugin:
llmgateway:
# ... providers, groups, users unchanged ...
modelMeta:
# Exact "provider/model" key.
"uni/deepseek-v4-flash-0731":
contextTokens: 524288
free: true
# Bare model id — applies wherever that bare id resolves.
"ornith-397b/qwen3.6-27b/btl-4":
contextTokens: 262144
free: true
```
- **Alias inheritance**: a [model alias](#model-aliases) inherits its
target's fully resolved metadata, unless the alias id itself has its
own `modelMeta` entry — that entry's fields win, independently per
field (setting only `contextTokens` on the alias still inherits the
target's cost).
- **Free-tier naming convention**: a model id ending in `:free` (a real
provider naming convention some upstreams use for their own free-tier
models) resolves to a known, zero cost even with no `modelMeta` entry
and no built-in table row for that exact id — ranked above the
built-in table, below an explicit `modelMeta` override. Context is
unaffected by this rule; it still resolves through the normal layers
above.
### Discovery-captured context (`metadataPath`)
Set `metadataPath` on an `openai`-type provider to fetch a second
endpoint alongside `discovery`, one that reports per-model context
length — LM Studio's own, non-OpenAI-compatible endpoint is the
supported shape:
```yaml
providers:
macstudio:
type: openai
baseUrl: "http://macstudio.local:1234"
discovery: true
metadataPath: "/api/v0/models"
```
The response's `loaded_context_length` field is preferred over
`max_context_length` when both are present — it reflects the context
actually usable right now, which an operator can configure smaller than
the model's own maximum under VRAM-constrained runtime settings. This
means the reported context window can **change** across a discovery
refresh (a model reloaded with a different context setting reports a
different value) — it is not a fixed, one-time fact the way the built-in
table's numbers are. A failed or absent metadata fetch is always
non-fatal: no metadata is captured for that refresh, and `discovery`
itself is unaffected.
### Built-in table
`pricing_data_gen.go` is a generated, checked-in table synced from
[LiteLLM's own pricing
data](https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/blob/main/model_prices_and_context_window.json),
pruned to the provider types this gateway can meaningfully match
(`openai`, `anthropic`, `deepseek`, `xai`, `minimax`, `cerebras`,
`dashscope`, `moonshot`) and to chat/embedding models only — the full
upstream table is over 3,000 entries, most of them for providers this
gateway has no adapter for.
Run `make pricing-sync` to regenerate it against the current upstream
data. This fetches over the network and writes `pricing_data_gen.go` at
build time only — the running plugin never fetches anything itself. The
generated file's header records a content digest of the fetched bytes,
not a date, so a re-run against unchanged upstream data reproduces an
identical file with nothing to review.
### `GET /v1/models` extension fields
Two OpenAI-compat-safe extra fields on each model object, present only
when known:
```json
{
"id": "openai/gpt-5",
"object": "model",
"owned_by": "openai",
"context_window": 400000,
"pricing": {"input_per_mtok_usd": 1.25, "output_per_mtok_usd": 10}
}
```
- `context_window` — an integer token count, omitted when unknown.
- `pricing` — `{input_per_mtok_usd, output_per_mtok_usd}`, both floats
in USD per 1,000,000 tokens. Omitted when unknown; present with `0`
values for an explicitly free model — a known zero, not an absent
field.
The admin dashboard's `GET /admin/api/overview` exposes the identical
resolved values per provider (`providers[].modelMeta`, keyed by upstream
model id) and per alias (`aliases[].modelMeta`) — see
[Admin](#admin).
## Limits and accounting
- Counters use **fixed windows**, keyed by UTC calendar boundaries (the
minute, the day, the month) — not a sliding window. Requests-per-minute
and requests-per-day counters increment **before** evaluation, so every
request counts toward its scopes' rate tracking even if it is ultimately
refused by a different scope's limit.
- Token and cost budgets are checked against the value **already
accumulated** from prior requests, before this request's own usage is
known (usage only arrives after the upstream call completes). A request
that would start already over budget is refused; a request that starts
under budget but pushes the scope over it is still allowed to complete —
an accepted at-most-one-request overshoot, not an exactly-enforced cap.
- **Accounting** parses usage from the provider's own response: OpenAI-type
`usage`, Anthropic `usage` (from `message_start`/`message_delta`), Gemini
`usageMetadata`. When a **non-streaming** unified-route response reports
no usage at all, the gateway falls back to a rough estimate —
`ceil(request-body-bytes / 4)` counted as prompt tokens, no completion
estimate — and marks it `estimated`. Estimated usage therefore lands
entirely in the `tokin` counter below; `tokout` never moves for an
estimated request. A **streaming** unified-route response with no usage
is logged and the request itself is still counted, but no token
estimate is applied.
- **Tokens are tracked in two directions**: every prompt token increments
a `tokin` counter, every completion token a separate `tokout` counter —
the same split the admin usage API and usage-history API both expose
(see [Admin](#admin)). `tokensPerDay`/`tokensPerMonth` limits are
unchanged by this: they still enforce one TOTAL budget, read as
`tokin + tokout` in a single batched store read at evaluation time. A
violation message still says "tokens", regardless of which direction
pushed the scope over.
- **A synthetic total scope** (`kind: "total"`, `id: "all"`) is counted
alongside every request's own user/group scopes on every metered route
(unified chat/embeddings, the media endpoints, native passthrough, the
per-server MCP/A2A proxy, and the federated `/mcp` endpoint) — the sum
of all LLM traffic combined. It carries no
limit and is never evaluated: no configuration can throttle it. The
admin usage API's `total` row and every `scope=total` usage-history
query read this scope.
- **An hour window** (`req`/`tokin`/`tokout`/`cost`, UTC calendar hour)
is counted alongside minute/day/month on every metered route, purely
for charting — no `LimitsConfig` field ever names it, so it is never
evaluated against a limit. It is the finest granularity the usage-
history API (below) can query.
- Cost is `tokens × price`, computed in integer **micro-USD**
(1,000,000ths of a dollar) throughout to avoid float drift, from the
built-in per-model table (`pricing.go`) or a configured `pricing`
override. An unpriced model costs 0 and logs a once-per-model warning
(capped at 128 distinct unpriced model names per process lifetime, then
one summary warning). The built-in table is **approximate** — list
prices as each provider published them, recorded 2026-08, and not kept
in sync automatically. Set `pricing` overrides for billing-grade
accuracy.
- **Storage**: `redis` configured wires a hand-rolled, stdlib-only RESP2
client (`resp.go`) — no `go-redis`, which is not Yaegi-interpretable —
against Redis, Valkey, or Dragonfly. Every counter write (`checkAndCount`,
`account`) goes through ONE pipelined round trip for the whole request,
regardless of how many user/group/total counters it touches (perf
review, 2026-08-21) — a 3-scope request previously paid up to 9 (request
counting) or 27 (usage accounting) separate round trips. Semantics are
deliberately **at-least-once, never under-counting**: a lost reply after
the server already applied the pipeline can cause a resend that
over-counts every counter in it by its own delta. This is a
fail-*safe* trade-off (more restrictive than reality), never a
fail-*open* one.
- **Fallback** (no `redis` configured, or a Redis error with
`failOpen: true`): counters live in an in-process map — correct for one
Traefik replica, only approximate across several, since each replica
counts independently. Exact limits across multiple Traefik replicas
require the shared Redis. **Enforcement stays correct on the fallback at
every window**, including `tokensPerMonth`/`costPerMonthUSD`: a
window's counter always outlives its own natural length
(`enforceTTLFor`, limits.go), so a month budget is still a true
calendar-month budget, never a rolling one, whether Redis is configured
or not.
- **Usage-history charting is more limited on the fallback**, and the
limit differs by window (`memoryStoreMaxTTL`'s 48h ceiling only binds
where a window's own `enforceTTLFor` floor sits under it — limits.go):
`hour` charts its full default span (48 buckets fit inside the 48h
ceiling); `day` only shows its most recent ~2-3 buckets out of the 35
a request can ask for (a day bucket's own key also sits under the
ceiling, so it expires long before a 35-day span would need it); `month`
charts its CURRENT bucket in full (a month's own floor, ~32 days, wins
over the ceiling — the in-progress month's key outlives the whole
month), but not any earlier one, since each past month's key already
expired ~32 days after its own creation. Redis applies the real
hour/day/month retention TTLs directly (no ceiling), so a Redis-backed
deployment charts the full span every window supports.
- **Retention** (Redis counter key TTL, distinct from a window's own
length): a minute key lives 2 minutes, an hour key 48 hours, a day key
35 days, a month key 400 days — long enough for the usage-history API's
largest span (48 hourly / 35 daily / 13 monthly buckets) to always find
a live key, not just long enough to survive that bucket's own single
rollover. **Migration**: none — a deployed process's old, unsplit `tok`
counter keys simply expire on their existing TTL and are never read
again; nothing needs backfilling.
- **Provider/model success rates** (`limits.go`): a separate counter
family from request/token/cost accounting above, tracking upstream
HEALTH rather than usage — `llmgw:prov:{provider}:attempt:{window}:
{bucket}` and `llmgw:prov:{provider}:fail:{window}:{bucket}` per
provider, `llmgw:provmodel:{provider}/{model}:attempt:{window}:{bucket}`
and the `fail` counterpart per `(provider, model)` pair. `window` is
`min` (2-minute TTL) or `day` (35-day TTL) only — no `hour` or `month`:
provider health is a now-and-today question, not a billing one. Every
upstream HTTP attempt increments `attempt`; only a provider-fault
outcome increments `fail` — the SAME transient classification [Retry](
#retry)'s own retry decision uses (connection error, HTTP 429, HTTP
5xx), **plus one addition this counter family alone applies**: a
request that hit the gateway's own configured deadline
(`context.DeadlineExceeded`) also counts as a failure here, even though
retry itself never retries a deadline it already knows has passed. A
request the CLIENT canceled (`context.Canceled`) still counts as an
attempt only, from both — not the provider's fault either way. A
non-429 4xx (the provider answered, just didn't like the request) is
never a failure. Retried attempts are all counted individually: a
request retried twice before succeeding writes three attempts here (two
failures, one success), not one. The admin overview API (see
[Admin](#admin)) is the only reader; the write itself runs off the
request's own goroutine (fire-and-forget — this is telemetry, and
nothing in the request path waits on or gates against it), so it never
adds latency to a response, streaming included. That goroutine is
bounded (64 in flight per process) and lossy under sustained pressure:
a write that cannot start immediately is dropped, not queued — a
deliberate trade-off against an unbounded goroutine pile-up if the
configured store ever goes slow without going fully down. Enforcement
(request/token/cost limits) never goes through this path at all.
- **Native passthrough accounts provider-level only, never per-model.**
`POST /{provider}/...` has no resolved model at request time — the
upstream model, if any, only appears in the response body, read after
the attempt has already resolved — so it never writes a `provmodel`
counter, only the provider-level ones above.
### Body-admission limit
The unified `chat/completions`/`embeddings` routes and the three media
routes (`images/generations`, `audio/speech`, `audio/transcriptions`)
each decode their request body into memory before doing anything else
with it — a step that can use several times the body's own byte size,
worst case, for an adversarially-shaped payload. To bound how many
requests can be doing that at once, each of those routes claims a slot
from a small in-process semaphore for exactly the duration of its own
read-and-decode step, and releases it immediately afterward — **not**
for the rest of the request. Resolving the model, checking the response
cache, and the upstream call itself (which can run for seconds to
minutes on a real completion) all happen with the slot already
released, so this never becomes a ceiling on total concurrent requests.
- On exhaustion (every slot in use at that instant), the request gets an
immediate **503** with a `Retry-After` header — never queued, never
blocked.
- The slot count self-tunes from the host's own `GOMAXPROCS` by default;
`maxInFlightBodyRequests` (see the `Config` table above) pins an exact
value instead when set.
- The unified chat/embeddings routes decode against a **4MiB** cap —
narrower than the 10MiB the media routes and `audio/transcriptions`'
multipart body still use (see [Body limits](#image-and-audio-endpoints)
above) — sized to comfortably fit a single inline base64-encoded image
in a chat message while bounding worst-case decode memory.
- **Native passthrough is not gated by this at all**: it streams the
request/response body straight through rather than decoding it into
memory, so there is nothing here for this limit to bound (the one
exception, a bounded 64KiB peek for model-restricted groups, is
already capped independently — see [Native passthrough model
authorization](#native-passthrough-model-authorization)).
## Retry
Same-provider retry for a transient upstream failure — no cross-provider
failover. Off by default (`retry.enabled: false`); every config that
predates this field keeps making exactly one upstream attempt per
request.
- **Scope**: every adapter upstream call — chat, embeddings, model
listing, and the three media endpoints (`images/generations`,
`audio/speech`, `audio/transcriptions`) — across all three provider
types. Native passthrough (`/{provider}/...`) and the MCP/A2A proxy are
raw reverse proxies and are never retried; the client owns retry
semantics there.
- **Attempts is retries, not tries**: `attempts` counts retries
performed **after** the first try. The default, `1`, allows one retry
— two tries total, not one. The maximum, `3`, allows three retries —
four tries total.
- **Transient classification**: a connection error (dial/EOF/reset), HTTP
429, or HTTP 5xx. Never a non-429 4xx, a translation error, a request
that failed to build in the first place (a malformed method or URL
fails identically on every attempt), or a context
cancellation/deadline.
- **Zero-bytes rule**: retry only runs before any response byte reaches
the client. A non-streaming call may retry its whole exchange. A
streaming call retries only the initial request, up to the point the
upstream's headers and status arrive — once the first chunk is
forwarded, a stream that then dies mid-flight is not retried, since the
client already holds partial data.
- **Waiting**: a 429 response carrying a `Retry-After` header that parses
as a non-negative whole-second count no greater than 2s waits exactly
that long. Every other case — no header, an unparseable value (for
example the HTTP-date form), a negative value, a value over 2s, or a
`Retry-After` on a non-429 5xx — falls back to exponential backoff
(`backoff × 2^(attempt-1)`), capped at 2s per wait either way. A
context canceled or timed out during a wait aborts the remaining
retries immediately, rather than blocking out the wait in full.
- **Accounting**: only the final attempt's usage is recorded — a failed
attempt's body is drained and discarded, never parsed for usage, so it
is never double-counted. Request counters still increment once per
client request, unchanged.
## Caching
An opt-in, Redis-backed response cache for the unified, non-streaming
`POST /v1/chat/completions` and `POST /v1/embeddings` routes. Off by
default (`cache.enabled: false`); every config that predates this field
keeps calling the upstream on every request. Caching also requires
`redis` to be configured — without it, `cache.enabled: true` is silently
disabled with one warning logged at construction, never a per-replica
in-process fallback: divergent replicas would otherwise serve different
cached bodies for the same request.
- **What's cacheable**: a non-streaming request to either route, whose
upstream response was HTTP 200 and no larger than `cache.maxBodyBytes`.
Never cached: a streaming request, native passthrough, MCP/A2A, the
image/audio endpoints (see [Image and audio endpoints](#image-and-audio-endpoints)),
or any non-200 upstream response.
- **Key**: `llmgw:cache:` plus a hex SHA-256 digest of the provider name,
the resolved upstream model id, the client's own exactly-as-sent
`model` string (`requestedModel`), the endpoint (`chat` or
`embeddings`), and the canonical JSON of the request body with
`stream_options` and `user` removed. `requestedModel` and the endpoint
are both part of the key so that two different alias forms of the same
upstream model (`claude-x` versus `anthropic/claude-x`) never collide
into one cache entry: a translating adapter (`anthropic`, `gemini`)
bakes the client's own alias into the cached response body's `model`
field, so a second client using the other alias form would otherwise
receive an id it never sent.
- **User identity is not part of the key.** Identical requests share one
cache entry across every user and group that can reach the model — by
design, since a provider's response to an identical request is
provider-deterministic and carries no per-user data.
- **Hit/miss header**: every cacheable request's response carries
`X-Llmgw-Cache: hit` or `X-Llmgw-Cache: miss`, set before the body is
written either way.
- **Accounting**: a cache hit increments request counters exactly like
any other request — `limiter.checkAndCount` runs before the cache
lookup — but never touches token or cost counters, and never runs the
streaming-response-with-no-usage estimate. Only a genuine upstream call
(a miss) accounts real tokens and cost. This means a cache hit is
request-quota-counted but token/cost-free.
- **Group override**: `GroupConfig.cache` (a `*bool`) overrides the
top-level `cache.enabled` setting per group — `nil` inherits it, `false`
opts the group out even when caching is globally on, `true` opts the
group in. Setting `true` on a group when the top-level `cache` is not
enabled — the block omitted entirely, or present with `enabled: false`,
both read the same way — is a construction error: there is nothing
configured to inherit `ttl`/`maxBodyBytes` from.
- **Group TTL override**: `GroupConfig.cacheTTL` sets the TTL written when
this group's own request populates a cache entry — it is not a per-group
scope. Cache entries are shared across groups, exactly like the "User
identity is not part of the key" bullet above: whichever group's request
happens to populate (or later refresh) an entry decides that entry's
TTL, and a later request from a different group that hits the same
entry reads it with the TTL already stored there, unaffected by its own
`cacheTTL`. An empty value inherits the global TTL for that group's own
writes; a set value must parse as a positive Go duration and requires
the top-level `cache` block to be configured, or construction fails.
- **Storage**: values are stored via the same hand-rolled RESP2 client
(`resp.go`) the limiter's distributed counters use — the identical
Redis/Valkey/Dragonfly connection, not a second one. A Redis error
during a cache read or write is treated as a miss (logged,
rate-limited) and never fails the request; the upstream call still
happens and the client still gets a correct answer.
## Unified vs. passthrough
| | Unified (`/v1/...`) | Native passthrough (`/{provider}/...`) |
|---|---|---|
| Wire format | Always OpenAI-shaped in, OpenAI-shaped out. | The provider's own native format, untouched. |
| Authorization | `group.allowsModel` AND `group.allowsProvider`, both checked against the resolved provider (`modelRegistry.resolve` — see [Model routing](#model-routing)). | `group.allowsProvider`, always. `group.allowsModel` too, but ONLY when the group's `models` list is non-empty — see the model-enforcement note below the table. `passthroughPaths`, when set, also gates the REST path. |
| Translation | `openai`-type: body forwarded verbatim (model id rewritten). `anthropic`/`gemini`: full bidirectional translation, including streaming, chunk by chunk. | None — a raw reverse proxy. |
| Model alias in the response | Translated providers (`anthropic`, `gemini`) echo back the client's exact requested model string in the response's `model` field, even though the upstream call used the resolved provider model id. An `openai`-type response is a verbatim passthrough of the upstream body, so it carries whatever model id the upstream itself returned — this asymmetry is intentional, not a bug. | The upstream's own `model` field, verbatim — there is no alias to echo. |
| Embeddings | `openai`-type: passthrough. `gemini`: mapped to `:embedContent`/`:batchEmbedContents`. `anthropic`: **501** — Anthropic's API has no embeddings endpoint. | Whatever the provider itself supports at that path, subject to the same `models`/`passthroughPaths` authorization as every other native passthrough request. |
| Unsupported parameters | A semantically meaningful field the target provider cannot express (e.g. `n > 1`, `logit_bias`, `logprobs` on Anthropic) is a **400**, never silently dropped. | Not applicable — the request reaches the provider exactly as sent. |
| Non-2xx upstream response | Wrapped in the gateway's own error envelope, with the provider's own body embedded under `error.upstream`. | Forwarded to the client exactly as the upstream sent it — status, headers, and body. |
### Native passthrough model authorization
A group's `models` glob authorizes native passthrough traffic too, but
only once it has something to authorize:
- **`models` empty (the default)** — nothing for `allowsModel` to reject,
so the request body is never even read for this purpose. Every request
reaches the provider exactly as it did before this feature existed.
- **`models` non-empty** — the gateway reads up to 64KiB of a JSON request
body looking for a top-level `model` field (a genuinely binary body —
multipart, `audio/*`, `image/*`, `video/*`, `application/octet-stream`
— is never read at all, since it cannot carry one). The field, when
found, is checked against `models` in both its bare and
`provider/model` forms. **A `model` field not found within that 64KiB
window is DENIED (403)** — fail closed, not fail open. This includes a
**Gemini** passthrough request: Gemini's model id lives in the URL
path, never the JSON body, so a group with a restricted `models` list
will see every Gemini passthrough request denied. Route Gemini traffic
for a model-restricted group through the unified `/v1/*` API instead.
## Anthropic Messages API (`/v1/messages`)
`POST /v1/messages` serves Anthropic SDK clients — including Claude
Code — directly, in Anthropic's own Messages API request/response shape:
the inbound counterpart to the outbound-only Anthropic support the
unified routes already had. From model resolution through response
caching, usage accounting, and adapter-error handling, this route shares
one implementation with `/v1/chat/completions`
(`runMeteredCall`, `routes_unified.go`) — the same group authorization
(see [`GroupConfig`](#groupconfig)), [limits and
accounting](#limits-and-accounting), and [caching](#caching) semantics
apply. Only the wire shape and the client-facing error envelope are
specific to this route.
### Authentication
Anthropic SDKs authenticate with the `x-api-key` header, not
`Authorization: Bearer`. This route accepts **both** — the identical
credential lookup (`authStore.identify`, `auth.go`) every other route
uses already reads either header, `Authorization: Bearer` taking
priority if a request somehow carries both — so no separate credential
path exists for this route. A failed auth answers in Anthropic's own
error shape (`{"type":"error","error":{"type":"authentication_error",
"message":"..."}}`), never the OpenAI-shaped
`{"error":{"type":...,"code":...}}` every other route uses.
### Translation vs. passthrough
Behavior depends entirely on the resolved provider's configured `type`:
| Resolved provider `type` | Behavior |
|---|---|
| `anthropic` | **Passthrough.** The request reaches that provider's own `/v1/messages` endpoint untranslated — no message-body translation of any kind. The response reaches the client BYTE-FOR-BYTE identical, with one exception: `"model"` is rewritten to the client's own requested alias, the same routing rewrite every route applies before any adapter call — not a translation of the response body. This is a real byte-level guarantee, not an approximation: every other field's value is copied from the upstream's raw bytes without ever passing through a Go value, so a JSON integer beyond `float64`'s exact range (inside, say, a `tool_use` block's arbitrary `input`) survives intact instead of being silently rounded. |
| `openai` or `gemini` | **Full bidirectional translation**, through the same `providerAdapter.chatCompletion` a `/v1/chat/completions` request against that provider already uses — its contract is OpenAI-shape in, OpenAI-shape out regardless of provider type. The Anthropic-shaped request is translated to OpenAI's shape before the call; that provider's OpenAI-shaped response is translated back to Anthropic's shape before it reaches the client. |
A few translation specifics worth knowing:
- **`anthropic-beta` is forwarded** to an `anthropic`-type upstream (an
explicit allowlist — `Authorization`, `x-api-key`, `Cookie`, and every
hop-by-hop header are never forwarded, and the gateway's own credential
injection always overrides whatever the allowlist copied), so Claude
Code and the SDKs can still opt into 1M context, token-efficient
tools, computer use, and other beta features through this route.
- **Prompt-cache tokens are billed.** Anthropic's
`cache_creation_input_tokens` and `cache_read_input_tokens` fold into
the same combined prompt-token count every other route's budgets
track, alongside `input_tokens` — not dropped, and not priced at a
separate cache-tier rate.
- **`tool_result.is_error`** has no native OpenAI tool-message field.
`content` — a string, Anthropic's content-block array form (Claude
Code sends this), or absent — is normalized to a plain string first
(OpenAI's own tool message requires one; a `null` content is
rejected), then gets an `"Error: "` prefix, so an OpenAI-backed
agentic loop still sees the failure signal regardless of which shape
the client sent.
- **Reasoning models** (OpenAI's `o1`/`o3`/`o4`/`gpt-5` families) get
`max_completion_tokens` instead of `max_tokens` — the field those
models reject with a 400.
- **`thinking`** (Anthropic's extended-thinking config) has no OpenAI
equivalent and is dropped when translating to an `openai`/`gemini`
target; the gateway logs a warning naming the dropped field rather
than discarding it silently.
### Streaming is not yet supported
`"stream"` set to anything other than the JSON literal `false`, `null`,
or an absent key gets a clean **400** `invalid_request_error` — never
silently ignored, never answered non-streamed. `null` is treated the
same as unset, so an SDK that serializes an unset optional field as
explicit `null` never gets a false-positive rejection on an ordinary
non-streaming call. This is deliberately a 400, not a 501: Anthropic's
own SDKs retry any status ≥ 500, so a 501 here would turn every
streaming call — the default for Claude Code — into a multi-request
retry storm against the caller's own request-rate limit. The rejection
happens *before* the rate limiter runs, so a streaming-rejected request
never consumes budget either. A follow-up release adds the Anthropic SSE
event translator (`message_start`/`content_block_delta`/`message_stop`)
— a genuinely different event model from OpenAI's own stream shape this
plugin already forwards on `/v1/chat/completions`.
### Route takeover
On a deployment running `passthroughUnknown: true`, `POST /v1/messages`
used to fall through to `next` (the router's own backing service) before
this route existed — nothing in this plugin recognized the path. Now the
gateway intercepts it unconditionally: `next` is never reached for this
path again, regardless of `passthroughUnknown`. This is intended — the
whole point of this route is for the gateway itself to answer
`/v1/messages` — but it is a real behavior change for any deployment
currently proxying `/v1/messages` downstream through
`passthroughUnknown`. Route that traffic elsewhere, or expect the
gateway to answer it directly, before upgrading.
## Image and audio endpoints
`POST /v1/images/generations`, `POST /v1/audio/speech`, and
`POST /v1/audio/transcriptions` follow the same pipeline as
`/v1/chat/completions` — auth, model routing, group authorization, limits,
adapter call — minus response caching and token/cost accounting (below).
> **Upgrading from v0.1**: these three routes are now handled by the
> gateway unconditionally. They are matched and served before
> `passthroughUnknown` is ever consulted, so a request to any of them
> **never** falls through to `next` — not even with `passthroughUnknown:
> true`. If a v0.1 deployment pointed its router's backing service at one
> of these exact paths and relied on passthrough to reach it, that backend
> must move to a different path before upgrading.
| | `openai`-type | `gemini` | `anthropic` |
|---|---|---|---|
| `images/generations` | Native forward. | Translated to Imagen's `:predict` (below). | **501**. |
| `audio/speech` | Native forward; the binary response is streamed to the client as it arrives. | **501** — no OpenAI-compatible text-to-speech endpoint. | **501**. |
| `audio/transcriptions` | Native forward; see below for how the multipart body is forwarded. | **501** — no OpenAI-compatible speech-to-text endpoint. | **501**. |
- **Model routing**: `images/generations` and `audio/speech` read `model`
from the JSON request body. `audio/transcriptions` reads it from the
multipart request's `model` form field instead — the field can appear
in any position among the request's parts, and a body with more than
one `model` field is a **400**.
- **Multipart forwarding**: when the client's `model` field already
equals the resolved upstream model id (a bare id, the common case), the
original multipart body is replayed byte-for-byte, unchanged. When it
does not — a provider-prefixed id (`openai/whisper-1`) or another alias
resolves to a different upstream model string — the body is rebuilt
with every other part copied verbatim and only the `model` part's value
rewritten, so the alias never reaches the real provider. The rebuilt
body uses a new multipart boundary; the client's exact boundary is not
preserved, only an equivalent body.
- **Gemini image translation**: `{model, prompt, n, size,
response_format}` maps to Imagen's `{instances:[{prompt}], parameters:
{sampleCount, aspectRatio}}`. `size` maps to `aspectRatio`:
`1024x1024`/`512x512` → `1:1`, `1792x1024` → `16:9`, `1024x1792` →
`9:16`; an absent `size` defaults to `1:1`; any other value is a
**400**. `response_format: "url"` is a **400** — the gateway stores
nothing to host a URL from. A truthy `quality` or `style` is a **400**,
the same convention chat's translators use for an unsupported field.
Imagen's `predictions[].bytesBase64Encoded` maps back to OpenAI's
`data[].b64_json`.
- **Never cached**: image and audio responses are excluded from the
response cache (`cache.enabled`) regardless of its configuration.
- **Accounting**: request counters (`requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay`)
increment the same as any other route. Token counters never move, and
cost is always recorded as 0 — images and audio are not
cost-accounted.
- **Body limits**: `images/generations` and `audio/speech` share a 10MiB
JSON cap — no longer the unified `chat/completions`/`embeddings`
routes' own cap, which is narrower (4MiB, see below); the media routes
kept the original 10MiB. `audio/transcriptions` enforces the same
10MiB cap explicitly, returning **413** over it — unlike an oversized
JSON body, which is silently truncated into a parse failure, a
truncated multipart body can still parse a valid prefix and would
forward cut-off audio upstream if it were not rejected outright.
- **Retry** (above) applies to all three the same as chat/embeddings; a
streaming `audio/speech` response is retried only before the first
response byte reaches the client, the same zero-bytes rule as chat's
streaming path.
## Admin
A read-only dashboard and JSON API for operational visibility — providers,
groups, model aliases, and per-user/per-group/total usage against
configured limits, plus usage charts. No mutation of any kind; config
stays owned by GitOps/Traefik as usual. Off by default (`admin.enabled:
false`, or the `admin` block omitted entirely): none of the routes below
are registered at all, and a request to any of them falls through to the
plugin's existing 404/`passthroughUnknown` handling.
The dashboard itself is a small Vue 3 + Pinia + Chart.js single-page app
([`webui/`](webui/)), built once with `vite build` and baked into the
plugin as generated Go source (`admin_assets_gen.go` — see
[Development](#development)); nothing under `webui/` is needed at runtime
or in CI.
- **Enabling it**: set `admin.enabled: true`, then flag at least one user
`admin: true` (`UserConfig.admin`) so someone can actually reach
`/admin/api/*`. An admin user is otherwise ordinary — their own keys,
group, and limits still apply everywhere except the admin routes
themselves (see "Admin traffic is never counted" below).
- **`GET /admin`** serves the built app's `index.html` shell, and
**`GET /admin/assets/{hashedname}`** serves its content-hashed JS/CSS.
Both are deliberately served **with no authentication at all** once
`admin.enabled` is true (disabled still falls through to the same
404/`passthroughUnknown` handling described above): a browser navigating
straight to the URL has no way to attach a custom `Authorization` or
`x-api-key` header, so gating the page itself would make it unreachable
from a browser in the first place. This is safe because the shell and
its assets carry **zero data of their own** — every value is fetched
client-side from the JSON routes below, which stay fully gated — and the
built JS/CSS is exactly what `vite build` emits from `webui/`, publicly
inspectable by any admin dashboard user already. Each asset response
carries a long-lived `Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000,
immutable` (the hash in the filename changes whenever the content does,
so a cached response never goes stale); an unrecognized asset name is a
`404` in the same error envelope every other unknown route returns.
- **Browser key-entry flow**: the page reads an admin API key from the
current tab's `sessionStorage` (a Pinia store owns this). Absent a
stored key, or on any `401`/`403` from a JSON route, it shows an inline
key-entry form instead of the dashboard. A submitted key is kept **only
in `sessionStorage`** — never a cookie, `localStorage`, or any
persistent store — so it disappears when the tab closes, and it is sent
only as the `x-api-key` header on this page's own `/admin/api/*`
fetches.
- **`GET /admin/api/overview`** and **`GET /admin/api/usage`** share one
gate: unauthenticated → 401, authenticated non-admin → 403, admin →
serve. `overview` returns the provider list, groups, the configured
model alias table (`alias`/`target` pairs, sorted by alias — see
[Model aliases](#model-aliases)), redis/cache/retry status (`retry`'s
`enabled`/`attempts`/`backoff` are the EFFECTIVE values after
[Retry](#retry)'s own defaulting, not the raw config — `attempts` and
`backoff` are both omitted when retry is disabled), and the plugin
version string. Each provider entry also carries `discoveryEnabled`
(the configured `discovery` flag, so the dashboard can tell "discovery
is off" apart from "discovery is on but has not refreshed yet" — both
otherwise show the identical zero `lastRefresh`), `attemptsDay`/
`failuresDay`/`attemptsMinute`/`failuresMinute` (the provider's own
current-window success-rate counters — see [Limits and
accounting](#limits-and-accounting)), `modelRates` (the identical
`attemptsDay`/`failuresDay` pair per known model, keyed by model id — no
per-model minute figures, since nothing displays them; the dashboard's
per-model badge falls back to a day-window-only detail instead), and
`modelMeta` (the resolved context window and cost per known model —
see [Model metadata](#model-metadata)); each alias entry carries its
own `modelMeta` too. `usage`
returns every user's and every group's
current-window counter values — `requestsPerMinute`, `requestsPerDay`,
`tokensInPerDay`/`tokensOutPerDay`, `tokensInPerMonth`/
`tokensOutPerMonth`, `costPerDayMicroUsd`, `costPerMonthMicroUsd` —
alongside their configured limits, plus one extra `total` row: the
synthetic all-traffic scope (see [Limits and accounting](
#limits-and-accounting)), limits always `null`. A group row also carries
its configured `providers`/`models`/`mcpServers`/`agents` access lists,
omitted when unrestricted. The dashboard's Providers and Usage views
poll both every 5 seconds while open.
- **`GET /admin/api/usage/history`** returns a bucketed series for one
scope/metric/window — the data source for the dashboard's Charts view
(per-user/per-group/total, stacked tokens-in/tokens-out, with a
24h/30d/12mo window switcher). Query parameters:
- `scope`: `user:{id}`, `group:{id}`, or the literal `total`.
- `metric`: `req`, `tokin`, `tokout`, or `cost`.
- `window`: `hour`, `day`, or `month`.
- `span` (optional): number of buckets, oldest-first, inclusive of the
current (possibly partial) bucket. Defaults to the window's max —
`48` for `hour`, `35` for `day`, `13` for `month` — and a larger
value is a `400`.
An unrecognized `scope`/`metric`/`window`, or an out-of-range `span`,
is `400`; a `user`/`group` id that names no configured entity is `404`;
the configured store being unreachable is `503` (a chart must never
read an outage as "zero usage"). Response shape:
`{"scope","metric","window","points":[{"bucket":"2026082114","value":123},...]}`.
The Charts view fetches this once per selection change, plus a 30s
auto-refresh of the current selection.
- **`GET /admin/api/targets`** returns every configured MCP server and
agent for the dashboard's "MCP & Agents" tab:
`{"mcpServers":[...],"agents":[...]}`, each entry
`{"name","url","access","counters"}`. `url` has any userinfo/query
string stripped, same as a provider's `baseUrl` in `overview`. `access`
is the list of group names actually allowed to reach that target,
computed via the identical glob match `mcpServers`/`agents`
authorization itself uses (`GroupConfig.mcpServers`/`agents`), so this
view can never disagree with what the proxy enforces; omitted when
every configured group can reach it. `counters` is
`requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay`/`requestsPerMonth` — requests
only, no tokens or cost (see [MCP and A2A](#mcp-and-a2a) for why). Polled
every 5 seconds, in the same batch as `overview` and `usage`.
- **What's exposed**: provider names, types, base URLs (with any
userinfo/query string stripped before it's ever echoed), model counts,
discovery status, group/user names, membership, limits, MCP/agent
target names/URLs/access, and live usage counters. **Never exposed**:
API keys (not even digests), provider keys, the Redis password, or
users-file path contents — every secret-bearing field is redacted from
every response.
- **Admin traffic is never counted**: none of the four `/admin/api/*`
JSON routes call `checkAndCount` — admin polling never moves any
user's or group's `requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay` counters, and
usage statistics reflect real LLM traffic only (operator directive: an
admin dashboard tab left open, however aggressively it polls, must
never itself distort the numbers it displays). The direct consequence:
an admin's own `requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay` limit, if
configured, is never enforced against admin-route traffic either — an
admin key holder can poll any of the four routes as fast as they like.
This is an accepted trade-off, not an oversight: these are admin-gated,
cheap reads, and an admin holder polling aggressively is a
self-inflicted, not a shared, resource cost. `GET /admin` and
`GET /admin/assets/*` count nothing either, for the simpler reason that
they are unauthenticated — there is no identified user to count a
request against.
- **Response headers**: all four JSON routes set
`X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff` and `Cache-Control: no-store`; every
hashed asset sets `X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff` and its own
immutable `Cache-Control` (above). Every one of these routes — `GET
/admin`, every hashed asset, and the four JSON routes — shares one
`Content-Security-Policy` header (`default-src 'none'; script-src
'self'; style-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self' data:;
frame-ancestors 'none'; base-uri 'none'; form-action 'none'`) — no
`'unsafe-inline'`, since the built app has no inline script or style of
any kind, only external `/admin/assets/*` references; `img-src`
additionally allows `data:` for the page's inlined favicon. A browser
only enforces CSP against the top-level document that names it, so an
asset response's own header governs nothing when the browser fetched it
as a `<script src>`/`<link>` sub-resource of `GET /admin` — it matters
only if that asset URL is ever navigated to directly, and every other
admin route already sends the identical header, so there is no reason
for asset responses to be the exception. The dashboard loads no
external asset of any kind and works in an air-gapped cluster.
## MCP and A2A
- **Registry** (group-filtered, sorted by name):
`GET /v1/mcp/servers` → `{"servers":[{"name","url"}]}`;
`GET /v1/agents` → `{"agents":[{"name","url","card"}]}`.
- **Proxy**: `/mcp/{name}/{rest...}` and `/a2a/{name}/{rest...}`
reverse-proxy `{rest...}` to the configured target's `url`, streaming
(SSE) preserved via a flush-per-write proxy. The gateway's own
`Authorization`/`x-api-key` credential is stripped before proxying, and
— unlike native provider passthrough — **no credential is injected** on
the way out: an MCP server or A2A agent is treated as an in-cluster
target that trusts the gateway's network position, not a per-provider
key the gateway holds on the caller's behalf.
- Request-rate limits (`requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay`) apply to
target-proxy calls the same as everywhere else; token/cost metrics do
not, since there is no usage to parse from an arbitrary MCP/A2A
response. Every proxied call (per-server proxy or federated `/mcp`) is
additionally counted against its own target's request-rate counters —
requests only, no configurable limit of its own this round — visible via
`GET /admin/api/targets` above.
- Group visibility (`mcpServers`/`agents` glob lists) gates both the
registry listing and the proxy path itself — a denied name is a 403 at
the proxy, not just hidden from the listing.
- **Federated `POST /mcp`**: a single JSON-RPC 2.0 endpoint aggregating
every MCP server the caller's group can reach — for clients built
against a single aggregated endpoint (the earlier, pre-plugin gateway
this replaces) rather than the per-server `/mcp/{name}/...` proxy above.
Unlike that proxy, this is not a byte-level reverse proxy: the gateway
decodes the request itself, answers `initialize`/`ping` locally, and for
`tools/list`/`tools/call` issues its own outbound JSON-RPC call(s) to
the relevant server(s) as part of handling that one request — no
session state is cached across separate CLIENT requests (per-request
upstream sessions, matching the per-server proxy's own complete absence
of gateway-side session tracking); a session a handshake retry opens
(below) lives entirely inside the one client request that triggered it.
Any other HTTP method on exactly `/mcp` is a `405` with an
`Allow: POST` header, checked before authentication.
- `tools/list` fans out to every allowed server concurrently — each
under its own 20s timeout — and merges the results, prefixing each
tool's name `"<serverName>_<toolName>"` — the same underscore-
separator convention the earlier agentgateway used and that existing
MCP clients (pugbot's `mcpclient`, agentkit) already persist in their
own tool-id records (e.g. `brave-search_brave_web_search`). A server
that errors, times out, or answers with a response that is not valid
JSON-RPC is skipped, not surfaced as a whole-call failure — the
aggregate degrades to every other server's tools. If EVERY attempted
server fails, the response is a JSON-RPC `internal error`
(`"no MCP server reachable"`) instead of a silently-empty tools list,
which would otherwise be indistinguishable from "this caller's group
has no MCP access at all".
- `tools/call` resolves the target server by the LONGEST matching
`"<serverName>_"` prefix against the caller's allowed servers (so two
configured servers where one name prefixes the other, e.g. `foo` and
`foo_bar`, resolve unambiguously), strips the prefix, forwards the
call under a 120s timeout, and relays the result under the caller's
own JSON-RPC `id`. An unresolvable prefix — including one that names a
real but group-restricted or transport-excluded server (below) — is a
JSON-RPC `invalid params` error (`-32602`), not an HTTP `404`: the
request reached a real route and method, it just named a tool nothing
could route.
- **Session handshake fallback**: each outbound backend call tries bare
(no session) first. A backend that answers with a JSON-RPC error or an
HTTP `4xx` — signalling "you need a session" — gets ONE retry: `POST
initialize` (this gateway's own protocol version and minimal
`clientInfo`), capture the `Mcp-Session-Id` response header if the
backend sets one, re-issue the real call carrying that header, then
best-effort `DELETE` the session afterward (failure logged, never
surfaced). A network failure, timeout, or `5xx` never triggers this
retry — only a response that specifically signals "missing session" is
worth a second attempt. This ruling was verified against all 11
production MCP servers behind this gateway: 8 answer bare outright, 2
(`readitall`, `fetch`) need exactly this handshake, and one — see
below — needs neither because it cannot be reached this way at all.
- **Legacy HTTP+SSE transport is excluded, not handshaken around**: an
MCP server configured with a URL whose path ends in `/sse` speaks the
superseded HTTP+SSE transport, not Streamable HTTP — its client must
drive a persistent SSE session no simple POST-per-call model (with or
without a session handshake) can replicate. Such a server never
appears in `tools/list`'s aggregate and can never be resolved by
`tools/call` — it is invisible to federation for every caller,
independent of group access — but stays fully reachable via the
per-server proxy (`/mcp/{name}/...` above), where the real client
drives the transport end to end.
- `notifications/*` gets a `202 Accepted` with no body (no response is
ever due for a JSON-RPC notification); any other method is a JSON-RPC
`method not found` (`-32601`). Malformed JSON is a JSON-RPC `parse
error` (`-32700`) with `id: null`, per spec. A non-2xx backend
response, or one whose body is valid JSON but carries neither
`result` nor `error`, is always treated as a failure — never silently
relayed as an empty success.
- `initialize`'s `protocolVersion` echoes the caller's own requested
value only when it names one of a small, explicit set of recognized
revisions (`2024-11-05`, `2025-03-26`, `2025-06-18`, `2025-11-25`);
an unrecognized or omitted value gets this gateway's own default
(`2025-11-25`) instead — never an arbitrary caller string echoed back
as a capability claim this plugin cannot back up.
- `checkAndCount` runs once per request (the caller's own user/group/
total scopes); each backend server actually ATTEMPTED — not
necessarily reached or succeeded — is additionally attributed its own
per-target counters, batched into one write per request, see `GET
/admin/api/targets` above and the request-rate note below. Applies to
MCP servers only, not agents: there is no equivalent aggregated
`/a2a` endpoint.
## Security notes
- API keys are never retained in memory as plaintext after construction —
only their SHA-256 digests. Lookup is by digest, verified with
`crypto/subtle.ConstantTimeCompare` against the stored digest, so
matching does not leak timing information about a near-miss key.
- Provider API keys are injected server-side (native passthrough's
`injectAuth`) and never reach the client; a client's own gateway key is
stripped before any upstream or target request and never reaches a
provider, MCP server, or A2A agent.
- Neither kind of key is ever written to a log line — the logging helpers
(`logger.go`) carry an explicit "never log key material" contract.
`providerHTTPError`'s `Error()` string (`providers.go`) separately omits
the upstream response body it still holds as a struct field, so a future
caller that ever formats the error bare (`%v`) cannot accidentally echo
provider response content into a log line; today's only caller
(`writeProviderUpstreamError`) reads that body directly and puts it in
the client-facing response, never in a log.
- **Every authentication attempt is logged**, through one shared helper
(`logAuthEvent`, `logger.go`) called at each of the six routes that
authenticate a request (`llmgateway.go`'s `ServeHTTP`, and
`routes_unified.go`'s `handleModels`). A failed attempt logs the request
method, path, and remote address, and returns the usual 401 JSON
envelope. A successful attempt logs the resolved user's name and the
route. Neither line ever includes the presented API key — only the
identity it resolved to, never the key material itself.
## Anonymous usage reporting
Release builds send **one** anonymous "plugin loaded" ping per process, at
startup, so the project can see roughly how many installs exist and which
versions are in use.
**What is sent** — the whole payload:
```json
{ "project": "traefik-llmgateway", "version": "1.0.3", "ts": 1747782200 }
```
**What is never sent:** no identifiers, no hostname or IP, no machine
information, no configuration, no provider names or base URLs, no API
keys, no user or group names, no model names, and nothing derived from a
request. The gateway sends the three fields above and nothing else.
**When it does not happen at all:**
- **Builds from source stay silent.** The version constant is stamped only
at release time, so a checkout, a local build, and every test run carry
the `0.0.0-dev` sentinel and never ping.
- **Failed startups stay silent.** The ping is sent only after the plugin
constructs successfully, so a rejected configuration is never counted.
- Only once per process, however many routes use the plugin.
**How to turn it off** in a release build — set any one of these in
Traefik's environment:
```bash
DO_NOT_TRACK=1 # honours the do-not-track.dev convention
OSS_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1
TRAEFIK_LLMGATEWAY_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 # this project only
```
In Kubernetes, add it to the Traefik deployment:
```yaml
env:
- name: DO_NOT_TRACK
value: "1"
```
**It cannot affect your gateway.** The call runs in its own goroutine with
a 2-second timeout, never blocks request handling or startup, never
retries, never persists anything, and swallows every error. If the
endpoint is unreachable or blocked by egress rules, nothing happens.
The client is [oss-telemetry](https://github.com/lukaszraczylo/oss-telemetry),
vendored in this repository, so you can read exactly what it does — it is
the plugin's only non-standard-library runtime dependency.
## Known limitations
- **Streaming is delivered buffered, not token-by-token, under the current
Traefik + Yaegi combination.** The plugin's own code streams correctly
(proven by its unit tests, which drive the exact same code compiled, not
interpreted): content is always complete and correct, but a Yaegi
limitation strips the `http.Flusher` interface from the
`http.ResponseWriter` crossing from Traefik's compiled dispatcher into
the interpreted plugin, so no per-chunk flush actually reaches the
client — the whole response arrives in one batch once the handler
returns. This is a confirmed, external, still-open upstream bug
([traefik/traefik#10269](https://github.com/traefik/traefik/issues/10269),
labelled `kind/bug/confirmed` by Traefik's own maintainers; see also
[traefik/yaegi#1600](https://github.com/traefik/yaegi/issues/1600)), not
a defect in this plugin, and no code-level workaround is known. The
integration suite's true incremental-delivery timing assertion is gated
behind `INTEGRATION_STREAMING=1` and skipped by default for exactly this
reason — re-run it once the upstream issue is fixed.
- **`POST /v1/messages` now intercepts unconditionally, even with
`passthroughUnknown: true`.** Before this route existed, that path
fell through to `next` on a `passthroughUnknown` deployment like any
other unrecognized path. The gateway now answers it directly and
`next` is never reached for it again — intended, but a real behavior
change for a deployment currently proxying `/v1/messages` downstream.
See [Anthropic Messages API — Route
takeover](#route-takeover).
- **A request rejected before it reaches a provider never consumes
request-rate quota.** On the unified routes, a malformed body, a missing
`model` field, or an unknown/denied model (404/403) is rejected before
`limiter.checkAndCount` runs. `/v1/messages` goes further for one
specific field: it decodes the body and rejects a streaming request
(400) *before* the rate limiter runs too, the opposite relative order
from the unified routes' own admission-before-decode default — a
deliberate, route-scoped exception (see [Anthropic Messages
API](#anthropic-messages-api-v1messages)), since Anthropic SDKs retry
any 5xx and would otherwise burn multiple requests of budget per
logical streaming call against a route that does not support streaming
yet. On native passthrough and the MCP/A2A proxy, denied provider/target
access (403), an unsupported `Upgrade` request (501), and a
path-traversal attempt (400) are all checked before the limiter too.
Once a request *does* reach a provider adapter,
though, a translate-time 400 (an unsupported parameter combination) or
Anthropic's embeddings 501 still count toward the caller's request-rate
limit — the limiter already ran by then — though neither ever bills a
token or cost, since usage stays at zero either way. The federated
`/mcp` endpoint follows the same shape: an unreadable body, an
unsupported `Upgrade`, or a malformed JSON-RPC envelope are all rejected
before the limiter runs, but a JSON-RPC-level error discovered AFTER
dispatch — `method not found`, an unresolvable `tools/call` prefix —
still counts, since `checkAndCount` already ran by the time the method
is even looked at.
- **Gateway-to-client responses on passthrough and MCP/A2A routes are
identity-encoded.** The gateway strips a client's own `Accept-Encoding`
header before forwarding to the upstream, so Go's `http.Transport` adds
its own `Accept-Encoding: gzip` and, per its documented contract,
transparently decompresses a gzip response and strips its
`Content-Encoding`/`Content-Length` headers before handing it back — the
client sees plain, uncompressed bytes with no `Content-Encoding` header,
regardless of what it originally asked for. This covers the gzip case
Go's `Transport` auto-negotiates; an upstream that used a different
encoding on its own initiative (never observed against OpenAI,
Anthropic, or Gemini) would pass through unmodified instead.
- **Image and audio responses are never cost-accounted.** Request
counters (`requestsPerMinute`/`requestsPerDay`) increment as usual, but
`images/generations`, `audio/speech`, and `audio/transcriptions` never
move a token counter and always record cost as 0, regardless of what a
provider itself would charge for them — a real gap for an operator
billing on these endpoints, not just an accounting nuance.
- **An upstream response over 32MiB (`maxResponseBytes`, `providers.go`)
is silently truncated, not rejected.** Every adapter response read — the
unified chat/embeddings JSON, and the three media endpoints — is capped
at this limit. `audio/speech`'s streaming copy (`openaiAdapter.audioSpeech`,
`provider_openai.go`) already committed the upstream's 200 status before
it starts copying bytes, so a response over the cap simply ends early: no
error, no truncation signal of any kind, a shorter audio file
indistinguishable from a genuinely short one. `images/generations` and
`audio/transcriptions` (`forwardMediaBody`) read their whole response
before writing a status, so they hit the identical cap with the same
silent-truncation-into-200 outcome. 32MiB is generous for any of these
payloads in practice, but nothing enforces or signals the cutoff.
- **The response cache shares entries across every user and group that
can reach a model.** `cache`'s key (see [Caching](#caching)) carries no
user identity by design, so two different callers sending the same
request receive the exact same cached response, including the exact
same `id`/timing-shaped fields a provider embeds in it. This is
intentional — a provider's response to an identical request is
provider-deterministic — but it means the cache is not a per-tenant
isolation boundary: don't enable it for a deployment where two callers
must never observe evidence that another caller made the identical
request.
## Kubernetes
See [`examples/kubernetes.yaml`](examples/kubernetes.yaml) for a complete,
YAML-validated example manifest that `kubectl apply -f` applies cleanly
once Traefik's CRDs (`Middleware`, `IngressRoute`) are installed in the
cluster: a `Secret` holding the users file, a `Middleware` custom resource
carrying the plugin's own configuration (validated against the real `Config`
struct — every field in that example round-trips through `New()`
cleanly), a dummy backing `Deployment`/`Service` (Traefik requires a real
router backend even though this middleware never actually reaches it —
see [Quickstart](#quickstart)), an `IngressRoute` wiring it all to a
host, and a Traefik Helm values snippet for loading the plugin and
wiring provider keys in from Secrets via environment variables.
The short version:
- Provider keys and the Redis password live in `env:VAR` form inside the
`Middleware`, sourced from Kubernetes `Secret`s mounted as environment
variables on the Traefik pod — never as literals in the CR.
- The users file lives in its own `Secret`, mounted as a volume, referenced
by `users.file` in the `Middleware` spec. Editing that `Secret` (and
letting it propagate to the mounted file, or restarting the pod if your
cluster's kubelet doesn't sync `Secret` volumes fast enough for your
needs) updates the live user set within the 5-second reload window — no
Traefik restart required.
- Point `redis.address` at your cluster's existing Redis/Valkey/Dragonfly
rather than standing up a dedicated instance for this plugin — the
distributed limiter is a client, not a datastore.
### Config hot-reload
Editing the `Middleware` custom resource applies with no pod restart and no
manual reload step. The Kubernetes CRD provider watches `Middleware`
resources natively: on a change, Traefik builds a whole new plugin
instance from the updated config, lets it warm-fill discovery for every
provider with `discovery: true` (see [Model routing](#model-routing)), then
swaps it in for new requests. This repository does not carry evidence of
Traefik's exact draining mechanism for requests already in flight on the
old instance at swap time. What is verified: the integration suite's
sustained-traffic reload test (`TestConfigHotReload`,
`integration/config_hot_reload_test.go`) sends requests throughout the
whole rewrite-and-propagation window and sees zero non-200 responses.
That result means different things depending on whether Traefik's
directory watch actually picks up the change within the test's own
bound. When it does, zero non-200s is evidence of a blip-free reload.
When it does not — a host-dependent propagation delay, not a plugin
defect — the same zero-non-200s result only shows the stack stayed
healthy through an unreloaded rewrite attempt, not that a reload itself
is blip-free.
A rebuilt instance keeps some state and resets the rest:
- **Survives a rebuild**: request/token/cost counters and cached responses,
both stored in Redis. A counter's key comes from `windowKey`'s
`(kind, id, metric, window, time)` alone (see
[Limits and accounting](#limits-and-accounting)) — never from anything
specific to one Gateway instance — so a new instance reads the exact
counters the old one wrote. The response cache's keys work the same way.
- **Resets on a rebuild**: the in-process fallback counters (used whenever
no Redis is configured, and also transparently during a Redis outage
when `failOpen` is true — the default; see `limiter.storeIncrMulti`,
`limits.go`), the limiter's and cache's own Redis-outage down-latches,
and the model registry's discovery cache — a new instance always runs
its own full warm-fill before serving, rather than inheriting the old
instance's listing. This is separate from the fallback's own
TTL-bounded retention (a window's counter still expires and resets on
its own, per-window schedule, even between rebuilds — see [Limits and
accounting](#limits-and-accounting)'s "Fallback" bullet): a rebuild
loses every fallback counter at once, TTL or not.
Two practical implications follow:
- **New models need no config edit at all.** A provider's own
`discoveryInterval` polls the upstream directly on its own schedule;
adding a model upstream needs neither a `Middleware` change nor a
rebuild.
- **The users `Secret` must be a whole-volume mount, never `subPath`.** A
`subPath` volume mount binds once at pod start — the kubelet never
updates it again, so a `Secret` change behind a `subPath` mount stays
invisible to the running pod for its whole lifetime (a documented
kubelet limitation, not a plugin one). Mount the whole `Secret` as its
own volume instead, exactly as `examples/kubernetes.yaml`'s
`additionalVolumeMounts` snippet does: a whole-volume mount updates by
the kubelet swapping a symlink, and the plugin's own 5-second mtime poll
(`reloadEvery`, `users_file.go`) picks that swap up with no pod restart.
If you run Traefik's file provider in Kubernetes instead of the CRD
provider — a `ConfigMap`-mounted dynamic config file rather than
`Middleware` resources — point it at the mount with `directory:`, never
`filename:`. A `ConfigMap` update reaches the pod the same way a `Secret`
does: the kubelet swaps a symlink for the whole mounted directory, which
Traefik's single-file `filename:` watch never observes; `directory:`
watches the directory itself and picks the swap up. The same
`directory:` requirement also holds for local/Docker Desktop development
against this plugin: a single file's fsnotify watch does not fire
reliably over Docker Desktop's VirtioFS bind mount, which is why this
repository's own integration stack (`integration/traefik/traefik.yml`)
uses `directory:` rather than `filename:`.
## Development
```sh
make test # go test ./... -count=1
make lint # gofmt -l . && go vet ./...
make yaegi-check # interprets the plugin with Yaegi, exercises .traefik.yml's testData
make admin-ui # rebuilds webui/ (npm ci && vite build) and regenerates
# admin_assets_gen.go — needed only after a webui/ source change
make integration # docker-compose: real Traefik, real Redis, mock providers; brings the
# stack up, waits for it, runs the suite, always tears it down after
make integration-keep # same run, but leaves the stack up afterward for debugging —
# tear it down yourself with `make integration-down` when done
```
`make admin-ui` needs Node (developed against v22 / npm 11) but nothing
else does: `admin_assets_gen.go` is committed, so `make test`/`make
lint`/`make yaegi-check`/`make integration`/CI never invoke Node at all.
Regenerate it after editing anything under `webui/`, then commit both the
`webui/` change and the regenerated `admin_assets_gen.go` together.
Also run before committing (not wired into `make lint`, since it needs a
separate binary): `golangci-lint run ./...` and
`golangci-lint run --enable=gosec ./...` (gosec applies to `_test.go`
files too), plus `fieldalignment ./...`
([`golang.org/x/tools/go/analysis/passes/fieldalignment`](https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/go/analysis/passes/fieldalignment)).
All are 0-issues on this repository as of this commit.
The plugin ships stdlib-only (no third-party dependencies at all, see
`go.mod`) — a hard constraint of Yaegi interpretation, not a style
preference. [`resp.go`](resp.go) is the clearest example: a hand-rolled,
~400-line RESP2 client instead of `go-redis`, which proved unsuitable for
Yaegi interpretation.
### Catalog
The plugin is listed, and the catalog serves the released tags.
[`.traefik.yml`](.traefik.yml) carries a `basePkg` override
(`traefikllmgateway`) because Traefik's Yaegi middleware loader otherwise
binds the interpreted package under
`strings.ReplaceAll(path.Base(import), "-", "_")` — `traefik_llmgateway`
— which does not match this package's actual `package traefikllmgateway`
declaration. This was discovered running the plugin in real Traefik for
the first time; see the comment in `.traefik.yml` itself. The catalog's
own analyzer (piceus) accepts the override the same way real Traefik
does, which the successful listing confirms.
Note that the catalog renders `.traefik.yml`'s description with a plain
CommonMark renderer: GitHub callout syntax (`> [!WARNING]`) and mermaid
blocks appear as literal text there, so keep that file's prose to plain
Markdown.
## License
[MIT](LICENSE) — Copyright (c) 2026 Lukasz Raczylo.