Model Routing Baselines for Claude and OpenAI Usage
A developer on r/openclaw shared their current model routing baselines for working with Claude and OpenAI models. The setup assigns specific models to different task types based on complexity and cost considerations.
Primary Model Assignments
The routing table includes:
- Default/General tasks: Claude Haiku 4.5 - "Fast, cheap baseline for most tasks"
- Architecture & Design: Claude Sonnet 4.6 - "Complex reasoning needed"
- Security Analysis: Claude Sonnet 4.6 - "Injection resistance matters"
- Debugging: Claude Sonnet 4.6 - "After 2 failed Haiku attempts"
- Major Decisions: Claude Sonnet 4.6 - "Multi-project impact"
- All Coding Tasks: ChatGPT 5.3 Codex - "Writing, debugging, review, codebase architecture"
- Advanced Reasoning: Claude Opus 4.6 - "Only if Sonnet can't solve it"
Fallback Strategy
When Anthropic models are unavailable:
- Standard tasks → GPT-5 Mini
- Complex tasks → GPT-5.4
Cost Optimization Rules
The developer specifies never using premium models for:
- File reads/writes
- Simple questions
- Status updates
- Formatting
- Anything Haiku handles in one shot
📖 Read the full source: r/openclaw
👀 See Also
Practical Glossary for AI Agent Terminology (Harness, Scaffold, Agent, etc.)
A glossary from Hugging Face blog explaining common AI agent terms like Harness, Scaffold, and Agent with simple definitions and real examples.
AI Engineer Notebooks: Framework-Free Colab Series Teaches RAG, Agents, Evals on Free Groq API
A new GitHub repo offers 30+ Colab notebooks covering the AI Engineer skill set — RAG, agents, evals, fine-tuning — all framework-free and running on the free Groq API.
OpenClaw 101: The Ultimate Setup Guide for New Users
CLAUDE.md Constitution: Building a Personal AI Agent — Part II File Walkthrough
A CEO shares the annotated CLAUDE.md file — 16 sections covering identity, proactive initiative, memory, deadlines, and hard rules — built over 6 weeks for a 50-person company.