Groups

A Group gives several models one request name. A regular Group contains models you choose, ranked in the order you want Relay to consider them. Relay waits for the preferred model when it can become available within the configured wait budget; with fallback enabled, it considers lower-ranked alternatives when that wait is too long.

A Smart Group chooses an approved model order based on the request. Use one when coding, writing, or other requests should select different models automatically. Smart Groups are hosted functionality; ordinary Groups and fallback remain available when self-hosting.

Dashboard

Regular Groups

1. Open Groups → Add Group. Enter a name and cooldown maximum wait, then create it.
2. Open Edit group. Drag models from Available models into the ranked list.
3. Drag assigned models to reorder them, or move one back to remove it. Membership/order changes save as you make them.
4. Adjust the group's name, enabled state, or wait setting and save those settings.

The current editor saves fallback enabled. The API also exposes the stored allow_fallback setting. Add upstream models through Providers first.

Smart Groups

1. Choose Add Smart Group, enter a name, and create it.
2. Open its editor. Review the automatically prepared assignments: one primary model and up to two fallbacks for each intent.
3. Adjust assignments, the default routing list, confidence threshold, and cooldown maximum wait; choose Save Smart Group.

Low-confidence requests use the default list. The selected list still obeys access, limits, and availability. Copy the displayed call name, such as smart/support; Smart Groups support generation requests, not embeddings.

API

Use a key with the relevant permissions; see API authentication. Replace placeholders with IDs from the corresponding list or create response.

Use relay:groups:read for reads and relay:groups:manage for writes.

The existing management API still calls regular Groups routing-lanes and their model assignments lane-memberships. These names configure saved Groups; they are never inference parameters. A cleaner public naming API is not yet available.

List Groups

curl 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/routing-lanes' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>'

Response — 200 OK

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

[
  {
    "id": "<GROUP_ID>",
    "name": "agentic",
    "slug": "agentic",
    "default_max_wait_ms": 60000,
    "allow_fallback": true,
    "enabled": true
  }
]

To retrieve one Group, find its id in this response. A single-Group GET endpoint is not implemented.

Create a Group

curl -X POST 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/routing-lanes' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "name": "agentic",
  "default_max_wait_ms": 60000,
  "allow_fallback": true,
  "enabled": true
}'

Response — 201 Created

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

{
  "id": "<GROUP_ID>",
  "name": "agentic",
  "slug": "agentic",
  "default_max_wait_ms": 60000,
  "allow_fallback": true,
  "enabled": true
}

Update a Group

curl -X PUT 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/routing-lanes/<GROUP_ID>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "name": "agentic",
  "default_max_wait_ms": 30000,
  "allow_fallback": true,
  "enabled": true
}'

Response — 200 OK

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

{
  "id": "<GROUP_ID>",
  "name": "agentic",
  "slug": "agentic",
  "default_max_wait_ms": 30000,
  "allow_fallback": true,
  "enabled": true
}

List model assignments

curl 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/lane-memberships' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>'

Response — 200 OK

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

[
  {
    "id": "<MEMBERSHIP_ID>",
    "lane_id": "<GROUP_ID>",
    "endpoint_id": "<MODEL_ID>",
    "manual_rank": 1,
    "enabled": true
  }
]

Find assignments whose lane_id equals the Group ID. Each assignment has its own id.

Add a model

curl -X POST 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/lane-memberships' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "lane_id": "<GROUP_ID>",
  "endpoint_id": "<MODEL_ID>",
  "manual_rank": 1,
  "enabled": true
}'

Response — 201 Created

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

{
  "id": "<MEMBERSHIP_ID>",
  "lane_id": "<GROUP_ID>",
  "endpoint_id": "<MODEL_ID>",
  "manual_rank": 1,
  "enabled": true
}

Reorder a model

curl -X PUT 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/lane-memberships/<MEMBERSHIP_ID>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "manual_rank": 2,
  "enabled": true
}'

Response — 200 OK

Selected response fields shown; IDs and values are illustrative.

{
  "id": "<MEMBERSHIP_ID>",
  "lane_id": "<GROUP_ID>",
  "endpoint_id": "<MODEL_ID>",
  "manual_rank": 2,
  "enabled": true
}

Update each affected assignment's manual_rank to give the list distinct ranks. The API has no atomic whole-list reorder operation.

Remove a model

curl -X DELETE 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/lane-memberships/<MEMBERSHIP_ID>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>'

Response — 204 No Content

No response body.

Delete a Group

curl -X DELETE 'https://api.anchorshell.com/api/relay/routing-lanes/<GROUP_ID>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>'

Response — 204 No Content

No response body.

Deleting a Group removes its memberships, not the provider models.

Call a Group

curl -X POST 'https://api.anchorshell.com/v1/chat/completions' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "model": "agentic",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Explain why queue-first routing preserves better models."
    }
  ]
}'

Response — 200 OK

Example non-streaming response (selected fields). Content, model, and usage depend on the selected provider.

{
  "id": "<COMPLETION_ID>",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "model": "gpt-5-mini",
  "choices": [
    {
      "index": 0,
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "Relay waits for the preferred model before considering fallback."
      },
      "finish_reason": "stop"
    }
  ]
}

Use the Smart Group call name in the same model field when applicable.

Next

Guardrails.