OpenRouter Production Checklist

Overview

A comprehensive production readiness checklist for OpenRouter integrations covering security, reliability, observability, cost management, and operational procedures. Each item includes the specific API endpoint or configuration needed to verify compliance.

Prerequisites

• An OpenRouter API key (sk-or-v1-...) exported as OPENROUTERAPIKEY — see the openrouter-install-auth skill for setup
• A working OpenRouter integration ready to launch — this skill validates an existing integration, it doesn't build one
• curl and jq for the pre-launch validation script and the auth/credit-limit checks
• Python 3.8+ if you turn the checklist dicts (SECURITY, RELIABILITY, OBSERVABILITY) into automated CI checks
• A secret scanner in CI (gitleaks or trufflehog) — the security checklist verifies its presence

Instructions

1. Work through the Security Checklist: keys in a secrets manager, 90-day rotation, per-key credit limits (GET /api/v1/auth/key → .data.limit), secret scanning in CI, HTTPS-only endpoints.
2. Verify the Reliability Checklist: a fallback chain (models array + route: "fallback"), SDK maxretries=3 with built-in backoff, timeout=30.0, a circuit breaker on the primary model, and maxtokens on every request.
3. Confirm the Observability Checklist: structured logs carrying generation_id/model/latency/tokens/cost, error-rate alerts (>5% over 5 min), P50/P95 latency per model, daily cost tracking via GET /api/v1/generation?id=, and credit-balance alerts.
4. Run the Pre-Launch Validation Script — it exercises auth, credit limit, primary-model availability, a live test request, and a hardcoded-key scan.
5. Fix every FAIL and re-run until the script prints READY FOR PRODUCTION, then wire it into CI as a pre-deploy gate per Enterprise Considerations.

Security Checklist

SECURITY = {
    "api_key_storage": {
        "check": "API keys stored in secrets manager (not .env files on disk)",
        "verify": "grep -r 'sk-or-v1-' --include='*.py' --include='*.ts' . | grep -v node_modules",
        "pass": "Zero matches",
    },
    "key_rotation": {
        "check": "Keys rotated on 90-day schedule",
        "verify": "Check key creation dates in OpenRouter dashboard",
        "api": "GET /api/v1/keys (management key)",
    },
    "credit_limits": {
        "check": "Per-key credit limits set to isolate blast radius",
        "verify": "curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key -H 'Authorization: Bearer $KEY' | jq '.data.limit'",
        "pass": "Non-null limit value",
    },
    "secret_scanning": {
        "check": "CI pipeline includes secret scanning (gitleaks, trufflehog)",
        "verify": "Check CI config for secret scanning step",
    },
    "https_enforced": {
        "check": "All requests use https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
        "verify": "Grep codebase for 'http://openrouter' (should be zero)",
    },
}

Reliability Checklist

RELIABILITY = {
    "fallback_models": {
        "check": "Fallback chain configured for critical models",
        "config": """extra_body={"models": ["primary", "secondary", "tertiary"], "route": "fallback"}""",
    },
    "retry_logic": {
        "check": "Retry with exponential backoff for 429 and 5xx errors",
        "config": "OpenAI SDK max_retries=3 (built-in backoff)",
    },
    "timeouts": {
        "check": "Per-request timeout configured",
        "config": "OpenAI(timeout=30.0)  # 30s per request",
    },
    "circuit_breaker": {
        "check": "Circuit breaker on primary model (3 failures → fallback)",
        "verify": "Review client wrapper for circuit breaker pattern",
    },
    "max_tokens": {
        "check": "max_tokens set on EVERY request",
        "verify": "Grep codebase for .create( calls without max_tokens",
    },
}

Observability Checklist

OBSERVABILITY = {
    "structured_logging": {
        "check": "Every API call logged with generation_id, model, latency, tokens, cost",
        "fields": ["timestamp", "generation_id", "model", "latency_ms", "prompt_tokens",
                   "completion_tokens", "cost", "status", "user_id"],
    },
    "error_alerting": {
        "check": "Alerts on error rate spikes (>5% over 5 min window)",
        "metric": "count(status=error) / count(*) over sliding 5min window",
    },
    "latency_monitoring": {
        "check": "P50 and P95 latency tracked per model",
        "threshold": "P95 < 10s for standard models, P95 < 30s for reasoning models",
    },
    "cost_tracking": {
        "check": "Daily cost tracked and compared to budget",
        "api": "GET /api/v1/generation?id={gen_id} for exact per-request cost",
    },
    "credit_balance_alert": {
        "check": "Alert when credits drop below threshold",
        "api": "GET /api/v1/auth/key → .data.usage vs .data.limit",
    },
}

Pre-Launch Validation Script

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== OpenRouter Production Readiness ==="
PASS=0; FAIL=0

# 1. Auth works
echo -n "1. API Authentication: "
AUTH=$(curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" | jq -r '.data.label // "FAIL"')
if [ "$AUTH" != "FAIL" ]; then echo "PASS ($AUTH)"; ((PASS++)); else echo "FAIL"; ((FAIL++)); fi

# 2. Credit limit set
echo -n "2. Credit Limit: "
LIMIT=$(curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" | jq -r '.data.limit // "NONE"')
if [ "$LIMIT" != "NONE" ] && [ "$LIMIT" != "null" ]; then
  echo "PASS (\$$LIMIT)"; ((PASS++))
else echo "WARN (no limit set)"; ((FAIL++)); fi

# 3. Primary model available
echo -n "3. Primary Model Available: "
MODEL="anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet"
EXISTS=$(curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models | jq --arg m "$MODEL" '[.data[] | select(.id == $m)] | length')
if [ "$EXISTS" -gt 0 ]; then echo "PASS ($MODEL)"; ((PASS++)); else echo "FAIL"; ((FAIL++)); fi

# 4. Test request succeeds
echo -n "4. Test Request: "
TEST=$(curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"openai/gpt-4o-mini","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}],"max_tokens":1}' \
  | jq -r '.choices[0].message.content // "FAIL"')
if [ "$TEST" != "FAIL" ]; then echo "PASS"; ((PASS++)); else echo "FAIL"; ((FAIL++)); fi

# 5. No hardcoded keys
echo -n "5. No Hardcoded Keys: "
KEYS=$(grep -r "sk-or-v1-" --include="*.py" --include="*.ts" --include="*.js" . 2>/dev/null | grep -v node_modules | grep -v ".env" | wc -l)
if [ "$KEYS" -eq 0 ]; then echo "PASS"; ((PASS++)); else echo "FAIL ($KEYS found)"; ((FAIL++)); fi

echo ""
echo "Results: $PASS passed, $FAIL failed"
[ $FAIL -eq 0 ] && echo "READY FOR PRODUCTION" || echo "FIX FAILURES BEFORE LAUNCH"

Output

• A pass/fail pre-launch validation report: five numbered checks, a Results: N passed, M failed summary, and a final READY FOR PRODUCTION / FIX FAILURES BEFORE LAUNCH verdict
• A completed three-part readiness checklist (security, reliability, observability) with the verify command or API endpoint recorded per item
• A hardcoded-key scan result — zero sk-or-v1- matches in source outside .env and node_modules

Examples

A correctly configured production key produces a clean run of the Pre-Launch Validation Script:

=== OpenRouter Production Readiness ===
1. API Authentication: PASS (my-app-prod)
2. Credit Limit: PASS ($100)
3. Primary Model Available: PASS (anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet)
4. Test Request: PASS
5. No Hardcoded Keys: PASS

Results: 5 passed, 0 failed
READY FOR PRODUCTION

A key with no credit limit instead shows WARN (no limit set) on check 2 and counts as a failure — set a per-key limit to bound blast radius before launch. More worked examples: references/examples.md.

Error Handling

Enterprise Considerations

• Run the validation script in CI as a pre-deploy gate
• Set up runbooks for common failure scenarios: rate limiting, credit exhaustion, provider outage
• Load test at 2x expected peak traffic to validate rate limits and fallback behavior
• Document escalation paths: when to contact OpenRouter support vs handle internally
• Review and update this checklist quarterly as OpenRouter adds features
• Keep a "break glass" procedure for emergency key rotation

References

• Examples | Errors
• API Reference | Status