● About
What OrbioGate is
A self-hosted control plane in front of one orbio account: a pool of API keys, automatic failover between them, a usage ledger, and a small web panel — running on one server, with no third-party service in between.
How a request flows
- A client (the claude CLI, an OpenAI SDK, a bot) sends the request to
https://orbiogate.com— or straight tohttp://127.0.0.1:8787on the box itself. - Caddy terminates TLS and forwards to the gate; the gate checks the token (the operator's
GATE_TOKENor a holder key) before anything moves. - The gate picks a key — the sticky one that worked last — forwards the request to
api.orbio.so, and streams the answer back chunk by chunk, never buffered. - If the key hits a cooldown (out of balance, invalid, rate-limited), the next key in the pool takes over inside the same request. Either way the attempt lands in the ledger.
What runs where
| Piece | Job | If it stops |
|---|---|---|
| orbio.so API | Supplies the models behind the gate | Nothing can answer; the site itself stays up |
| Two API keys | The account's credit at orbio (primary, then fallback) | Primary drains → the fallback key takes over automatically |
| The gate (FastAPI) | Token check, key pool, failover, streaming pass-through | API requests fail; the emergency direct path in ~/.orbio/fallback.env still works |
| SQLite ledger | Who spent what, per key and per model | Bookkeeping pauses; nothing else breaks |
| Caddy | HTTPS at orbiogate.com, auto-renewed certificates | The domain goes dark; 127.0.0.1:8787 keeps serving locally |
| The web pages | Landing, dashboard, docs, this page | Presentation only — the API keeps running |
Same genre, different scope
Gateway-in-front-of-LLM-keys is a known pattern. The closest relatives, for context:
- OpenRouter — one API for many models. orbio works the same way upstream; OrbioGate manages the account keys in front of it.
- LiteLLM Proxy — the closest open-source relative: key pool, fallbacks and budgets in front of LLM providers. OrbioGate is a small, purpose-built version of that idea.
- one-api / new-api — community projects for multi-provider key pools with token distribution. Heavier web UI; same genus.
- Cloudflare AI Gateway — the managed take: caching, rate limits and logging in the cloud. OrbioGate keeps everything on one box instead.
Why build one? Because the box is ours, the ledger is ours, and the keys never leave it.