This is a cool project, and the idea of using LLMs to selectively extract features from open source projects is an interesting concept.
The only thing I take issue with is the phrase "LiteLLM Without the Bloat." A lot of the features that have been removed (like cost tracking, streaming, caching) are... kind of the core value proposition of LiteLLM for many of their users.
And let's not forget that they regularly break things. For example they had merged a pull request that was supposed to fix issues related to the openrouter/free models but in the process broke openrouter for all models except the free ones.
The fix was deployed 2 weeks later (!!) to main (but you could downgrade of course).
Or that other time they broke model selection if you had selected "this key can used all models of their team" than the only model in the auto-selection for harnesses was an invalid "all-team-models" entry. Fixes this one in 1 week though.
LiteLLM doesn't quite live up to its name. With all those features, there is nothing "lite" about it. It is essential for a project to live up to its name.
Imagine Sqlite adding heavy features from Postgresql, e.g. row-level security.
But imagine Sqlite not supporting joins or window functions... sure they are useful but look how many LOC it adds! Who is the arbiter of what Lite actually means?
We run it at my org and it's never been a noticeable resource hog. It's actually the best performer between it, our AI observability stack and the front end.
I have the same complaint about oh-my-pi's readme. The tone is obnoxious. It's somehow jaded and matter-of-fact at the same time. Like it was written by that one guy at work who never misses a chance to brag about how clever he is.
One "AI-ism" I noticed is that LLMs often just put sentences behind one another without using any connecting adverbs - and just leave it to the reader's imagination how the sentences are related to each other.
E.g. in the readme: "LiteLLM routes LLM calls across providers and translates between message formats. That core is buried under 100k+ LOC of proxy servers, caching layers [etc...]".
Those two sentences have opposite sentiment on LiteLLM, so a human author would at least put a "but" between them. In contrast, the LLM just strings them together.
This reads "blunt" and "matter-of-fact" at first glance, but I wonder if it's really just an artifact of allocating less space for text generation and more for code in LLMs.
There is a band called The Protomen who do rock operas about the Mega Man storyline. They have a very earnest, gritty sound. Every time I read a project README written by AI, I hear the voice over from the first track of the first album, Act 1: Hope Rides Alone (https://youtu.be/VZ8jyGVioxg?is=gsXlgwa4Ubx6LmKE).
"Twelve years Light worked and on a cold night in the year 200X, Protoman was born.
A perfect man, an unbeatable machine, hell-bent on destroying every evil standing between man and freedom, built for one purpose, to destroy Wily's army of evil robots. Ready. Willing. Prepared to fight."
For the Protomen it makes sense. But for a project README it's so absurdly melodramatic.
1. Not a tangent, it’s related to the very first content visible on that link.
2. Not a dismissal, an advise from an expert
3. Not complaining, as stated, giving an advise about the optics of using clear LLM prose on the first paragraph
Really? I mean, yeah, it's probably written by an LLM, but it's hardly the worst that I've seen. Looks way more straight forward than the modern README featuring a ton of badges, emojis, confusing out-of-context screenshots, "trust me bro" installation instructions, vague elevator pitches, "used by netflix, nasa, disney, good morning america, alex jones, the church of scientology", and other verbiage to create the illusion that the author won't immediately get bored and abandon their glorified dissertation piece. They all scream "give me your github stars" whereas this one doesn't. But I still get what you mean when it comes to the particular 'isms.
"litellm routes LLM calls across providers and translates between message formats. That core is buried under 100k+ LOC"
Seriously anybody considering 100k+ LOC not a bloat? You made my day!
Let's just say the author's and my definition of bloat is not the same. Full disclosure, I'm the guy who reimplemented etcher (over 400Mb) in a mere 300Kb, Capstone (over 1Mb) in only 66Kb and who compressed LPC charactersheets (over 700Mb) into 4Mb. That's my interpretation of "non-bloated".
I like the API, and since this is open source I will copy the design with attribution: I have been organically hacking little bits of LLM client code for most providers in Common Lisp for about 3 1/2 years and it is time to clean up all my old code. I probably need to do the same sort of refactoring for my search API wrappers.
Funny, everything you pruned away is the reason I’m deploying LiteLLM in our platform. Having a reliable way to track token spend per customer across different services is important to us, and LiteLLM handles this well
First off, cool project! It's always great to see derivatives that question the efficiency of the established product.
I think the main thing the readme is missing is the core benefits. Reducing LOC and dependencies is cool, but it would be great to understand if this provides some additional benefits like lower latency or memory requirements.
Immediate first impression is that this tagline should go. If the project brings something valuable to the table it doesn't need to shit on other permissively licensed open source projects to make a case for itself
most software like this will be dematerialized, democratized, and demonetized - companies building in the infra band being increasingly disintermediated
This readme, when it talks about all the different AI endpoints it can use, reminds me of something.
I'm not an AI bro, but I've dabbled. It's kind of remarkable that all the different providers speak the same "openai compatibile" https endpoints. In other realms of software development, real interoperability like that can be kind of rare. Even if people support conceptually the same API, everybody always puts their unique incompatible spin on it. In the dabbling that I've done, big incompatibilities seem rare.
This is a 30 minute project with a frontier LLM. I don’t see why anyone would use anyone else’s router. Techniques are valuable today. Libraries are not.
I'm always confused by LLM proxies that claim to support tool calling. Even for Bifrost that claims to be doing it, at least when I was checking it out, I found out that while it injects the list of MCP tools that's available on the proxy-side, it doesn't actually make the call on client's behalf, and clients get confused by it (response returns MCP call request whose tool doesn't exist on the client-side).
I don't have specifics since it's been months, but LiteLLM on a hetzner server, deployed through Coolify was using 1-4 GB (cannot exactly, and dont know why either).
Bifrost feels very light, though.
Will try LiteLLM if it's in Rust.
Would also appreciate a slicker aesthetic. I got used to Bifrost shadcn with 0 border radius.
LiteLLM and LangChain are AWFUL pieces of software and should be avoided at ALL costs.
Btw, you should update httpx to httpx2, and I think it's not much effort to remove openai's SDK compatibility.
I'd love to have a provider-agnostic LLM router (almost) dependency free (aside from httpx2).
The only thing I take issue with is the phrase "LiteLLM Without the Bloat." A lot of the features that have been removed (like cost tracking, streaming, caching) are... kind of the core value proposition of LiteLLM for many of their users.
The fix was deployed 2 weeks later (!!) to main (but you could downgrade of course).
Or that other time they broke model selection if you had selected "this key can used all models of their team" than the only model in the auto-selection for harnesses was an invalid "all-team-models" entry. Fixes this one in 1 week though.
all of them on the :latest docker tag btw
https://docs.litellm.ai/blog/litellm-rust-launch
Imagine Sqlite adding heavy features from Postgresql, e.g. row-level security.
https://www.getmaxim.ai/bifrost/resources/benchmarks
Having ran both LiteLLM and Bifrost for months, I can largely confirm the numbers from those benchmarks for myself.
E.g. in the readme: "LiteLLM routes LLM calls across providers and translates between message formats. That core is buried under 100k+ LOC of proxy servers, caching layers [etc...]".
Those two sentences have opposite sentiment on LiteLLM, so a human author would at least put a "but" between them. In contrast, the LLM just strings them together.
This reads "blunt" and "matter-of-fact" at first glance, but I wonder if it's really just an artifact of allocating less space for text generation and more for code in LLMs.
"Twelve years Light worked and on a cold night in the year 200X, Protoman was born. A perfect man, an unbeatable machine, hell-bent on destroying every evil standing between man and freedom, built for one purpose, to destroy Wily's army of evil robots. Ready. Willing. Prepared to fight."
For the Protomen it makes sense. But for a project README it's so absurdly melodramatic.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage.
See: Hacker News Guidelines
"Without the Bloat"
vs.
"litellm routes LLM calls across providers and translates between message formats. That core is buried under 100k+ LOC"
Seriously anybody considering 100k+ LOC not a bloat? You made my day!
Let's just say the author's and my definition of bloat is not the same. Full disclosure, I'm the guy who reimplemented etcher (over 400Mb) in a mere 300Kb, Capstone (over 1Mb) in only 66Kb and who compressed LPC charactersheets (over 700Mb) into 4Mb. That's my interpretation of "non-bloated".
Thanks for the cool project.
I think the main thing the readme is missing is the core benefits. Reducing LOC and dependencies is cool, but it would be great to understand if this provides some additional benefits like lower latency or memory requirements.
I’m biased but I think mine is coded to a higher standard than litelm. https://github.com/s-banach/langchaint
I'm not an AI bro, but I've dabbled. It's kind of remarkable that all the different providers speak the same "openai compatibile" https endpoints. In other realms of software development, real interoperability like that can be kind of rare. Even if people support conceptually the same API, everybody always puts their unique incompatible spin on it. In the dabbling that I've done, big incompatibilities seem rare.
Yes, LLMs can do a great job at writing semi-working MVP. Turning it into a usable project still requires a team.
Yeah, maybe for your toy project you can use a LLM written tool.
Also, I am not saying LiteLLM is good either.
Bifrost feels very light, though.
Will try LiteLLM if it's in Rust.
Would also appreciate a slicker aesthetic. I got used to Bifrost shadcn with 0 border radius.
I’m happy to provide any support if you’re willing to try out the initial version.