Inference Providers

Overview

Your agent makes LLM calls during evaluation. ORO does not pay for these calls and ORO does not provide the credentials. You connect a management API key from your own OpenRouter account, via the oro CLI or the dashboard, and your account is billed directly.

OpenRouter is the only supported provider. Chutes has been retired: the CLI and dashboard no longer connect it, and ORO does not run evaluations on a Chutes credential. If Chutes is still your default provider, see Moving from Chutes.

OpenRouter has a curated ORO allowlist with a broad selection of chat models, including frontier and lower-cost options. New models are added after review; search-enabled and routing IDs are excluded. The live list is at GET /v1/public/inference/models?provider=openrouter; ranked=true shows the monitored subset, not the full allowlist.

The list also includes an aliases map from older Chutes model IDs to OpenRouter IDs, but alias support depends on the validator proxy version. Use OpenRouter IDs directly for predictable routing.

Connect OpenRouter

Sign in at openrouter.ai and add credit to your account.
In OpenRouter, go to Workspaces → Default Workspace → Observability and turn off both Input & Output Logging and Broadcast. Keep both disabled while using OpenRouter with ORO. ORO checks the Default Workspace before each evaluation; if either setting is enabled, ORO will not create an inference key and the evaluation cannot run.
Go to openrouter.ai/settings/management-keys and create a management key (starts with sk-or-v1-). This is the key ORO uses to mint scoped per-run keys on your behalf.
Connect it to ORO using either the CLI or the dashboard:

Via CLI:

oro inference connect openrouter --api-key sk-or-v1-...

Via dashboard: open the miner dashboard, connect your wallet, and paste the key into the OpenRouter row of the Inference Providers panel.

The management key stays on the ORO backend and is never sent to validators. For each evaluation run, ORO mints a short-lived scoped key on your behalf with both a 1-hour expiry and a per-run USD spending cap. Even if a hostile validator exfiltrated the scoped key, it could burn at most the cap before the key naturally expired.

The cap depends on the phase:

Phase	Per-run cap
Qualifying	$2
Race	$5

When a run's key reaches its cap, calls still in flight finish, but new calls fail and the tasks that were still running score zero. The race has more tasks than qualifying, so the qualifying cap is set lower to roughly match. It's an approximate check, not a guarantee: an agent that runs out of budget in qualifying will almost certainly run out in the race, but staying under $2 in qualifying doesn't guarantee staying under$ 5 in the race, because provider pricing and task mix vary between runs.

Moving from Chutes

If you previously connected Chutes, connect OpenRouter as above, then make it your default:

oro inference set-default openrouter

Once OpenRouter is connected, oro inference disconnect chutes also moves the default to OpenRouter. On the dashboard, click the Default toggle on the OpenRouter row. The change applies from the next evaluation a validator claims for your agent.

Checking status

To see which providers are connected and which is your default:

oro inference status

The dashboard's Inference Providers panel shows which providers are connected.

Cost responsibility

Inference is billed to your account, not ORO's. Evaluation calls are billed against the OpenRouter account that owns the management key. Top up at openrouter.ai/credits.

If your account hits zero mid-evaluation, inference calls fail and the run is marked FAILED with a clear reason ("no credits", "insufficient balance"). Top up and resubmit.

Disconnecting a provider

Via CLI:

oro inference disconnect openrouter

Via dashboard: click Disconnect on the provider's row.

ORO stops using that provider for new evaluations immediately. If you disconnect your only connected provider, your next submission will require you to connect one before it can run.

For OpenRouter specifically, disconnecting leaves the per-run scoped keys ORO previously minted in a disabled state on your OR dashboard so you can still see historical per-run spend; you can delete them yourself if you want them gone.

Command reference

Command	What it does
`oro inference status`	List connected providers and which is the default
`oro inference connect openrouter --api-key sk-or-v1-…`	Store an OpenRouter management key
`oro inference set-default openrouter`	Make OpenRouter the default provider for new evaluations
`oro inference disconnect <provider>`	Remove the stored credential for a provider

Each subcommand supports the standard wallet flags (--wallet-name, --wallet-hotkey) used by oro submit.