Swap the Model, Not the Code: OpenRouter on Netlify
⚡ OpenRouter is live in Netlify AI Gateway and Agent Runners. Chris Watts (OpenRouter) and Jack Herrington (Netlify and Tanstack) build with it live.
Description
Until recently, picking a model on Netlify meant picking from a handful. Now it's the whole OpenRouter catalog.
DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, and hundreds of other frontier and open models, available directly inside AI Gateway and Agent Runners. No separate keys, no separate billing, no rewriting your integration every time you want to try something new.
Chris Watts, Head of Engineering at OpenRouter, joins us to talk through what's actually in that catalog and how to think about choosing from it. Then Jack Herrington builds live with TanStack AI, swapping models mid app to show what changes and what doesn't.
What we'll get into
What just shipped: OpenRouter inside AI Gateway and Agent Runners How to actually pick a model. Cost, latency, context window, and where open models beat the obvious default Building with TanStack AI, live, and switching models without touching your app code Running open models inside Agent Runners The use cases this opens up that were awkward or expensive before
Who this is for
Developers building anything AI shaped. If you've been defaulting to one model because switching felt like a project, this session is for you. Some JavaScript familiarity helps for the demo, but the model selection conversation is useful whatever you're building in.
What you'll leave with
A working understanding of the catalog, a demo repo to pull apart, and a much cheaper way to run the parts of your app that don't need a frontier model. Bring questions for Chris. He knows this catalog better than anyone.
Agenda (60 min)
0:00 Welcome, and what just shipped
0:05 The catalog: what's in OpenRouter and how to choose (Chris)
0:20 Live build: TanStack AI app on AI Gateway (Jack)
0:40 Swapping to open models mid build, and what actually breaks
0:50 Live Q&A, then repo and resources
Speakers
Chris Watts, Head of Engineering, OpenRouter
Jack Herrington, Principal Developer Experience Engineer, Netlify
Karthik Puvvada, Head of Community, Netlify (host)