Switchboard
How it worksRequest access

Product

Three callers. One registry. One wire.

Apps, agents, and customer developers each get their own Switchboard key. Providers are connected once—every caller inherits the same governed path, including AI thinking tiers billed at your rates.

Callers

Who holds the key shapes what they can do

Kind is first-class: app backends, agent/MCP traffic, and external customer API keys. Same envelope, different scopes and approval rules.

01

App

sb_live_app_…

First-party product backends. Broad family scopes (ai.*, travel.*, civic.*) without provider keys in the repo.

02

Agent

sb_live_agt_…

MCP toolsets curated by family. Side-effect ops need approval. Same metering as every other call.

03

Customer

sb_live_cus_…

Governed access for your customers’ developers. Least-privilege scopes, namespaced spend via SB-Customer.

Thinking tiers

AI without picking a vendor every time

Anybody, Thinker, and Expert are Switchboard models on top of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and more. Each tier has a fixed primary + failover ladder you edit in the control room. Power users can still allowlist concrete provider models.

anybody

Anybody can do

Cheap, basic work. Routed to efficient models with a configured failover ladder.

thinker

Thinker can do

Standard smart work. Primary + fallback across your preferred providers.

expert

Expert can do

Harder jobs and deeper reasoning. Advanced models when the connection needs them.

# Recommended — Switchboard routes the ladder
curl https://switchboard.example/v1/proxy/switchboard/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sb_live_app_…" \
  -d '{"model":"thinker","messages":[…]}'

Billing

Cost from providers. Price from you.

The pricebook carries per-model cost and bill price across every AI connector— plus Switchboard tier rates. Ledger rows keep both so margin is visible by customer, feature, and resolved model.

What callers pay

  • Set absolute rates or percent markup per pricebook ref
  • Thinking tiers bill at switchboard/chat/anybody|thinker|expert
  • Effective-dated changes without redeploying apps

What you spend

  • COGS quoted from the resolved provider model
  • Attribution by app, SB-Customer, feature, and model
  • Reconcile ledger cost against provider invoices

Connectors

Ship integrations as YAML, not bespoke clients

Auth, operations, limits, metering, webhooks, and data policy live in the registry. 89+ providers today—AI (including Switchboard tiers), communications, identity, payments, travel, civic open data, and more.

AI

ai.*12

Communications

comms.*6

Identity

identity.*4

Payments

payments.*6

Finance

finance.*7

Travel & navigation

travel.*5

Civic / city data

civic.*14

Marketing

marketing.*8

SaaS

saas.*9

Research

research.*2

Media

media.*8

DevOps

devops.*5

Observability

observability.*3

Surfaces

How callers talk to the hub

Callers are who holds the key. Surfaces are the wire shape—REST, SDK, or MCP—generated from the same connector spec.

01

Thinking tiers & OpenAI-compatible

POST /v1/proxy/switchboard/chat/completions with model anybody|thinker|expert—or keep vendor SDKs on per-provider proxies.

02

Typed SDKs

Generated from the registry. Retries and policy stay in the hub; the SDK fails over across cells.

03

MCP tools

tools/list filtered by toolset (family). Agent keys inherit scopes; side effects need approval.

# One call shape for every provider
curl https://switchboard.example/v1/call/twilio.send_sms \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sb_live_app_…" \
  -H "SB-Customer: atlas:cus_8812" \
  -H "SB-Feature: login-otp"

Control

Traffic that respects provider reality

Shared RPM and TPM buckets, priority lanes, circuit breakers, and fail-closed rules when a side effect times out.

On the hot path

  • Precompiled policy: one lookup per key and operation
  • Thinking-tier ladder resolve with breaker-aware failover
  • Token leasing so Redis never blocks a request
  • Node-local credential injector over a Unix socket

Off the hot path

  • Usage ledger with cost, price, tier, and resolved model
  • Hash-chained audit with redaction by default
  • Webhook ingress with durable ack and replay
  • Knowledge bank cache with complete keys

Early access

What you unlock

For platform teams

A control room for connectors, keys, pricebook rates, thinking-tier ladders, budgets, webhooks, and risk gates. Cells and last-known-good when control blinks.

For product teams

Mint app, agent, or customer keys with Switchboard tiers by default. Spend and margin by SB-Customer and feature—without scattering provider credentials.

Request accessRead the security model