Validate production readiness of your OpenRouter integration. Use before launching to production or during operational reviews. Triggers: 'openrouter production', 'openrouter launch', 'production checklist openrouter', 'openrouter deploy'.
Validate production readiness of your OpenRouter integration. Use before launching to production or during operational reviews. Triggers: 'openrouter production', 'openrouter launch', 'production checklist openrouter', 'openrouter deploy'.
A comprehensive production readiness checklist for OpenRouter integrations covering security, reliability, observability, cost management, and operational procedures. Each item includes the specific API endpoint or configuration needed to verify compliance.
Prerequisites
An OpenRouter API key (sk-or-v1-...) exported as OPENROUTER_API_KEY — see the openrouter-install-auth skill for setup
A working OpenRouter integration ready to launch — this skill validates an existing integration, it doesn't build one
curl and jq for the pre-launch validation script and the auth/credit-limit checks
Python 3.8+ if you turn the checklist dicts (SECURITY, RELIABILITY, OBSERVABILITY) into automated CI checks
A secret scanner in CI (gitleaks or trufflehog) — the security checklist verifies its presence
Instructions
Work through the Security Checklist: keys in a secrets manager, 90-day rotation, per-key credit limits (GET /api/v1/auth/key → .data.limit), secret scanning in CI, HTTPS-only endpoints.
Verify the Reliability Checklist: a fallback chain (models array + route: "fallback"), SDK max_retries=3 with built-in backoff, timeout=30.0, a circuit breaker on the primary model, and max_tokens on every request.
Confirm the Observability Checklist: structured logs carrying generation_id/model/latency/tokens/cost, error-rate alerts (>5% over 5 min), P50/P95 latency per model, daily cost tracking via GET /api/v1/generation?id=, and credit-balance alerts.
Run the Pre-Launch Validation Script — it exercises auth, credit limit, primary-model availability, a live test request, and a hardcoded-key scan.
Fix every FAIL and re-run until the script prints READY FOR PRODUCTION, then wire it into CI as a pre-deploy gate per Enterprise Considerations.
A pass/fail pre-launch validation report: five numbered checks, a Results: N passed, M failed summary, and a final READY FOR PRODUCTION / FIX FAILURES BEFORE LAUNCH verdict
A completed three-part readiness checklist (security, reliability, observability) with the verify command or API endpoint recorded per item
A hardcoded-key scan result — zero sk-or-v1- matches in source outside .env and node_modules
Examples
A correctly configured production key produces a clean run of the Pre-Launch Validation Script:
=== OpenRouter Production Readiness ===
1. API Authentication: PASS (my-app-prod)
2. Credit Limit: PASS ($100)
3. Primary Model Available: PASS (anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet)
4. Test Request: PASS
5. No Hardcoded Keys: PASS
Results: 5 passed, 0 failed
READY FOR PRODUCTION
A key with no credit limit instead shows WARN (no limit set) on check 2 and counts as a failure — set a per-key limit to bound blast radius before launch. More worked examples: references/examples.md.
Error Handling
Error
Cause
Fix
Production key exposed
Key logged or committed
Rotate immediately; deploy from secrets manager
No fallback configured
Primary model goes down
Add models array with route: "fallback"
Missing monitoring
Errors go undetected
Set up alerting before launch
No max_tokens
Runaway completion costs
Add max_tokens to every request
Enterprise Considerations
Run the validation script in CI as a pre-deploy gate
Set up runbooks for common failure scenarios: rate limiting, credit exhaustion, provider outage
Load test at 2x expected peak traffic to validate rate limits and fallback behavior
Document escalation paths: when to contact OpenRouter support vs handle internally
Review and update this checklist quarterly as OpenRouter adds features
Keep a "break glass" procedure for emergency key rotation
