openrouter-curl

OpenRouter shell-out via curl

This pattern lets a Claude Code subagent generate content using a cheap OpenRouter model without routing through Claude. The subagent stays in Claude (cheap orchestration tokens); the actual generation happens at Gemini-Flash / Haiku-4.5 prices (~10× cheaper).

Prerequisites

• OPENROUTER_API_KEY exported in the agent's environment.
• Subagent's tools includes Bash restricted to Bash(curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/*).
• The shell where the subagent runs has curl and jq.

Recommended models

Use case	Model id	Why
short-form copy (tweet, release-note)	google/gemini-2.5-flash	cheapest, decent voice
longer reasoning under 2k tokens	anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5	reliable, no jailbreak guardrails to fight
code-adjacent prose, technical	deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro	strong on technical tone

Always pin a specific model id — :latest aliases drift.

Request shape

RESPONSE=$(curl -sS https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "HTTP-Referer: https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>" \
  -H "X-Title: smurf-orchestrator" \
  -d @- <<'JSON'
{
  "model": "google/gemini-2.5-flash",
  "messages": [
    {"role": "system", "content": "You are a developer-relations writer. Tone: technical, accessible. No marketese."},
    {"role": "user",   "content": "Write 3 release-note variants for the change described below.\n\n<feature summary>"}
  ],
  "temperature": 0.5,
  "max_tokens": 600
}
JSON
)

Parse + write

echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -r '.choices[0].message.content' > docs/marketing/<date>-<slug>/release-notes.md
COST=$(echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -r '.usage.total_cost // 0')
echo "openrouter cost: \$$COST"

If the response shape is unexpected (rate limit, auth fail), jq returns null — handle by inspecting the raw response:

if [ "$(echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -r '.choices[0].message.content // empty')" = "" ]; then
  echo "openrouter call failed:" >&2
  echo "$RESPONSE" | jq . >&2
  exit 1
fi

Rate limits

OpenRouter free tier: ~50 req/day across all models. Paid: per-key cap configurable. If hit:

• back off 60s, retry once.
• on second failure, write a stub file with a # TODO: regenerate when rate-limit resets header and exit 0 (don't fail the whole run for a tier-3 task).

Cost expectations per agent run

Agent	Calls per run	Tokens per call	Cost on Gemini Flash
marketing	5 (release notes×3, tweet, linkedin, changelog, demo script)	~600 out / 800 in	<$0.01 total
sales-feedback	1–3 (theme summarization)	~1500 out / 3000 in	<$0.05 total

If you see a single curl above $0.10, something is wrong — likely unbounded max_tokens or a recursion. Check the request body.

Security

• NEVER include the OpenRouter key in any committed file.
• NEVER log the full request headers; redact Authorization.
• NEVER POST sensitive customer data — OpenRouter is a third party.
• The MCP system has no equivalent shell-out; this pattern is bash-only and stays out of MCP scope.