Guides
One key, every Conductor.
OpenRouter puts models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Mistral, and more behind a single key. Paste it once and audition Conductors until one earns the podium.
Setup in three steps
- Create an API key in your OpenRouter account.
- In Loom Settings, choose OpenRouter as the Conductor provider and paste the key. Like every key in Loom, it is stored only in the OS keychain and sent through the SSRF-guarded Rust proxy, never written to disk.
- Pick a model and type a goal. Changing your mind later is a Settings change, not a migration, which is the entire appeal.
The fleet is unaffected by any of this. Your six Claude Code sessions keep running on your existing Claude login, as covered in The Claude login. The OpenRouter key powers only the Conductor, the model that plans and supervises.
Choosing a model
Pick for judgment, not speed.
Reasoning first
The Conductor splits goals into a mission DAG, watches every terminal, and verifies work before it counts. That is judgment work, so favor models known for reasoning over models known for latency.
Match the mission
A frontier model earns its price planning a gnarly migration. A cheaper model is plenty for a documentation sweep. One key makes trying both a thirty-second experiment.
You pay OpenRouter, not Loom
Loom is free and adds no markup. Conductor usage lands on your OpenRouter bill at their listed prices, and you can watch it model by model.
Common questions
Routing, answered.
Why OpenRouter instead of a direct key?
One key instead of eight. If you want to compare Conductors across labs without juggling accounts, OpenRouter is the comfortable path. If you live inside one provider's ecosystem, a direct key works just as well.
Does the fleet route through OpenRouter too?
No. The fleet is six real Claude Code CLI sessions authenticated by your Claude login and needs no API key at all. OpenRouter only ever sees Conductor traffic.
What if I want zero API spend?
Run the Conductor locally on LM Studio, MLX, or Ollama. No key, no bill, planning on your own silicon. The walkthrough is in Local Conductors.
Hand it the work.
Walk away.
macOS, Linux, and Windows. Around 13 MB. Free and open source.