Quickstart (hosted)

This walks through the exact steps on the hosted instance at api.dodorouter.com. Everything here also works identically on a self-hosted instance — just swap the base URL.

# 1. Create an account

Go to api.dodorouter.com/users/register and enter your email. DodoRouter uses passwordless, magic-link login: there's no password to set at this step, just an email address and agreement to the Terms of Service.

DodoRouter emails you a one-time login link. Open it and click Continue to DodoRouter — this both confirms your account and logs you in. (If you'd rather use a password day-to-day, you can set one later under Settings; magic-link login keeps working either way.)

# 2. Create a router

On first login you're dropped straight into New Router. Give it a name (e.g. my-agent) — a URL-safe slug is derived from it automatically. Saving generates your router's API key, shown once in a banner. Copy it now; DodoRouter only ever stores a salted hash, so if you lose it you'll need to regenerate a new one from the API Keys page (which invalidates the old one).

# 3. Add a provider API key

Go to Providers, pick a provider (e.g. OpenAI or Anthropic), click Add Key, and paste in your API key from that provider. DodoRouter verifies it in the background and shows a green check once confirmed valid.

# 4. Add a routing step

Open your router, and under Routing Chain click Add Step. Choose the provider, then the model (pick from the list, synced from live provider catalogs, or choose Custom… to type an exact model id). Add a second and third step with different providers if you want automatic fallback — that's the whole point.

# 5. Send your first request

Use the router's API key as a Bearer token. The model value you send doesn't matter — DodoRouter always uses whatever model is configured on the routing step — so "default" is a fine placeholder.

curl https://api.dodorouter.com/r/my-agent/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-dodo-YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Verified response shape (this exact request was run against a live DodoRouter instance):

{
  "choices": [{
    "finish_reason": "stop",
    "index": 0,
    "message": { "content": "Hello! How can I help you today?", "role": "assistant" }
  }],
  "model": "gpt-5.5",
  "usage": { "completion_tokens": 10, "prompt_tokens": 13, "total_tokens": 23,
             "prompt_tokens_details": { "cached_tokens": 0 } }
}

Every request also gets logged in real time under Logs, with full request/response bodies, timing breakdown, token usage, and cost.