NadirClaw

Why NadirClaw?

Most LLM requests don't need a premium model. In typical coding sessions, 60-70% of prompts are simple — reading files, short questions, formatting. They can be handled by models that cost 10-20x less.

$ nadirclaw serve
✓ Classifier ready — Listening on localhost:8856

SIMPLE  "What is 2+2?"              → gemini-flash    $0.0002
SIMPLE  "Format this JSON"          → haiku-4.5       $0.0004
COMPLEX "Refactor auth module..."   → claude-sonnet    $0.098
COMPLEX "Debug race condition..."   → gpt-5.2          $0.450
SIMPLE  "Write a docstring"         → gemini-flash    $0.0002

3 of 5 routed cheaper · $0.549 vs $1.37 all-premium · 60% saved

• Cut AI API costs — how much depends on your prompt mix, so NadirClaw measures it per request
• ~10ms classification overhead — you won't notice it
• Drop-in proxy — works with any OpenAI-compatible tool
• Runs locally — your API keys never leave your machine
• Fallback chains — automatic failover when models are down
• Built-in cost tracking — dashboard, reports, budget alerts

Your keys. Your models. No middleman. NadirClaw runs locally and routes directly to providers. No third-party proxy, no subsidized tokens, no platform that can pull the plug on you. Why this matters.

How NadirClaw works

Three moves, on every request:

1. Route — a ~10ms embedding classifier predicts the smallest model likely to answer and sends the prompt there first. Routing modifiers (agentic tool loops, reasoning markers, vision content, long context) can override the score and force a stronger tier.
2. Verify — the cheap answer is scored against quality heuristics (refusals, truncation, JSON-format failures) before it ships. Pro swaps the heuristic for a trained reference-free verifier.
3. Escalate — if the answer falls below the acceptance threshold (τ = 0.80), NadirClaw steps up to the next-best model automatically. You only pay for the big model when the small one wasn't enough.

Benchmarks

NadirClaw and Nadir Pro share the same routing architecture. The numbers below are from the trained classifier + DeBERTa verifier in Nadir Pro; the NadirClaw classifier uses a simpler binary centroid that trades some accuracy for zero training cost. Both run the same cascade rule engine (nadirclaw/cascade_rules/).

RouterBench (held-out, n=11,420): reference-assisted research ceiling

Read this before quoting these numbers. This is a reference-assisted research ceiling: the verifier had the expensive model's reference answer, which a production cascade does not have. It is not production performance and not a savings forecast. The verifier that ships in Nadir Pro is reference-free and does not see a reference answer. Nadir publishes no universal production savings or quality percentage until it is measured on outcome-labelled customer traffic.

The composed system (pre-generation classifier + post-generation cascade verifier, τ=0.80), with the reference answer available:

Full τ-sweep and per-domain breakdown is in MODEL_CARD.md.

RouterArena (sub_10, n=809, public leaderboard)

RouterArena submission PR (live): RouteWorks/RouterArena#112.

Contamination audit

Zero overlap between Nadir's training corpus and either held-out set:

The audit is reproducible from this repo: verifier/contamination_audit.py. Hash recipe: sha256(NFC(prompt).strip().casefold().utf8).

Quick Start

pip install nadirclaw

Or install from source:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NadirRouter/NadirClaw/main/install.sh | sh

Then run the interactive setup wizard:

nadirclaw setup

This guides you through selecting providers, entering API keys, and choosing models for each routing tier. Then start the router:

nadirclaw serve --verbose

That's it. NadirClaw starts on http://localhost:8856 with sensible defaults (Gemini 3 Flash for simple, OpenAI Codex for complex). If you skip nadirclaw setup, the serve command will offer to run it on first launch.

NadirClaw vs Nadir Pro

NadirClaw is the free, source-available core, licensed under PolyForm Noncommercial (free for noncommercial use). If you are routing production traffic or running a team, Nadir Pro is the hosted version with more accurate routing, team features, and analytics. Same routing philosophy, zero vendor lock-in (Pro lets you BYOK and you can always fall back to NadirClaw self-hosted).