⚡ Free-AI Gateway

Enterprise-grade capability-routed AI Gateway monorepo aggregating free-tier AI APIs into reusable libraries, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and OpenAI-compatible HTTP proxies.

📚 New to Free-AI Gateway? Check out the comprehensive Architecture & Developer Guide (LEARN.md) for detailed deep dives, tutorials, and integration patterns.

📖 Architecture & Monorepo Overview

free-ai-gateway is organized as an enterprise monorepo separating pure AI orchestration infrastructure from protocol-specific delivery mechanisms (HTTP Fastify Proxy & MCP Server):

flowchart TD
    subgraph CoreLayer ["@free-ai-gateway/core (Standalone npm package)"]
        Router["CapabilityRouter & Strategy Engine"]
        Providers["19 Provider Adapters & Dynamic Registry"]
        Resilience["QuotaTracker & CircuitBreaker"]
        Observability["EventBus & MetricsTracker"]
        Transport["HttpClient with Exponential Backoff"]
    end

    subgraph Consumers ["Consumer Applications"]
        GatewayApp["apps/gateway (@free-ai-gateway/gateway)<br/>Fastify HTTP OpenAI Proxy"]
        McpApp["packages/mcp (@free-ai-gateway/mcp)<br/>Model Context Protocol Server"]
        SkillsPkg["packages/skills (@free-ai-gateway/skills)<br/>Agentic IDE Skills & CLI"]
        CliApp["packages/cli (@free-ai-gateway/cli)<br/>Terminal Assistant & Diagnostics"]
        ClientApp["Custom Node.js / TypeScript App<br/>Direct Library Import"]
    end

    GatewayApp -->|consumes| CoreLayer
    McpApp -->|consumes| CoreLayer
    SkillsPkg -->|integrates with| CoreLayer
    CliApp -->|consumes| CoreLayer
    ClientApp -->|consumes| CoreLayer

Monorepo Workspaces Matrix

✨ Key Capabilities

• 🎯 Capability-Based Routing: Request what you need (model: "auto:tool_calling+structured_output"), and let the router choose the fastest healthy free provider.
• 📐 Strategy Pattern Engine: Pluggable load balancing strategies (AdaptiveHealthStrategy, LowestLatencyStrategy, or custom IRoutingStrategy).
• 🔄 Autonomous Failover: Transparently cycles through ranked candidate providers until success upon encountering upstream 429 (Rate Limit) or 5xx errors.
• 🛡️ Circuit Breaker: Detects failing providers and enters exponential cooldown backoff to prevent cascade failures.
• ⏱️ Sliding-Window Quota Tracking: In-memory accounting of RPM, TPM, and RPD with proactive limit protection.
• 🔌 Dynamic Provider Autoloader: Add new providers by dropping a class extending BaseProvider into packages/core/src/providers/.
• 📡 Typed Event Bus: Lifecycle events (request:start, request:success, request:fallback, provider:rate_limited) for OpenTelemetry and Prometheus observability.
• 🤖 Model Context Protocol (MCP) Ready: Use directly in Claude Desktop, Cursor, or agent workflows.

🧩 Supported Providers Matrix (19 Adapters)

🚀 Quick Start

1. Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/zaber-dev/free-ai-gateway.git
cd free-ai-gateway

# Install dependencies across all monorepo workspaces
npm install

2. Configure Environment

Copy .env.example to .env and provide keys for the providers you wish to enable:

cp .env.example .env

PORT=3000
GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...
GOOGLE_API_KEY=AIza...
NVIDIA_API_KEY=nvapi-...
COHERE_API_KEY=...

3. Build & Run

# Compile all workspace packages
npm run build

# Run all 31 automated tests across all packages
npm test

# Start the Fastify HTTP Gateway (Dev mode)
npm run dev

# Start the Gateway in Production
npm start

💻 Usage Modalities

Option A: HTTP Gateway (OpenAI Compatible)

Call the local proxy with any OpenAI SDK or curl:

curl http://localhost:3000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "auto:tool_calling+structured_output",
    "messages": [
      { "role": "user", "content": "Extract name and age from: Alice is 30 years old." }
    ]
  }'

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "http://localhost:3000/v1",
  apiKey: "not-needed",
});

const completion = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "auto:reasoning",
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Solve: How many r's in strawberry?" }],
});

console.log(completion.choices[0].message.content);

Option B: Embedding @free-ai-gateway/core as a TypeScript Library

Embed the capability router directly into your application without launching an HTTP server:

import {
  CapabilityRouter,
  Registry,
  QuotaTracker,
  CircuitBreaker,
  EventBus,
  LowestLatencyStrategy,
} from "@free-ai-gateway/core";

const registry = new Registry();
const quota = new QuotaTracker();
const breaker = new CircuitBreaker();
const eventBus = new EventBus();

// Listen to lifecycle telemetry
eventBus.on("request:fallback", (evt) => {
  console.warn(`[Fallback] Failed on ${evt.attemptedProvider}: ${evt.error}`);
});

const router = new CapabilityRouter(
  registry,
  quota,
  breaker,
  undefined,
  eventBus,
  new LowestLatencyStrategy()
);

const response = await router.route({
  capabilities: ["text", "tool_calling"],
  payload: {
    messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello AI!" }],
  },
});

console.log("Served by:", response.servedBy);
console.log("Data:", response.data);

Option C: Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server

Connect Free-AI Gateway to Claude Desktop or Cursor:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "free-ai-gateway": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/free-ai-gateway/packages/mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "GROQ_API_KEY": "gsk_...",
        "GOOGLE_API_KEY": "AIza..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Exposed MCP Tools:

• freeai_generate: Generate text, reasoning, or code with automatic failover.
• freeai_search: Web search queries via Exa / Tavily.
• freeai_embed: Generate vector embeddings via Voyage, Jina, Gemini.
• freeai_rerank: Rerank documents for retrieval augmented generation (RAG).
• freeai_analyze_image: Multimodal vision analysis.

Option D: Agentic IDE Skills (@free-ai-gateway/skills)

Install Free-AI Gateway agent skills directly into your IDE or autonomous coding assistant:

# Install to Google Antigravity (.agents/skills)
npx @free-ai-gateway/skills install --target=antigravity

# Install to Cursor (.cursor/skills)
npx @free-ai-gateway/skills install --target=cursor

# Install to Claude Code (.claude/skills)
npx @free-ai-gateway/skills install --target=claude

# Install to all supported AI assistants
npx @free-ai-gateway/skills install --target=all

Option E: Terminal CLI Tool (@free-ai-gateway/cli)

Use Free-AI directly from your terminal or command-line scripts:

# One-off prompt execution with auto-routing
npx @free-ai-gateway/cli "Explain MapReduce in simple terms"

# Interactive chat REPL in terminal
npx @free-ai-gateway/cli chat --capability=reasoning

# Check model catalog across all 19 providers
npx @free-ai-gateway/cli models

# Run system diagnostics
npx @free-ai-gateway/cli doctor

🏛️ Monorepo Structure

free-ai-gateway/
├── packages/
│   ├── core/                        # @free-ai-gateway/core
│   │   ├── AGENTS.md                # Agentic guidelines for @free-ai-gateway/core
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── capabilities/        # Capability definitions & parsing
│   │   │   ├── config/              # providers.json, schema, config sources
│   │   │   ├── errors/              # ProviderError, NoProviderAvailableError
│   │   │   ├── observability/       # EventBus, MetricsTracker
│   │   │   ├── providers/           # 19 Provider Adapters + Registry + Loader
│   │   │   ├── resilience/          # QuotaTracker, CircuitBreaker
│   │   │   ├── router/              # CapabilityRouter & Strategy Pattern
│   │   │   ├── transport/           # HttpClient with exponential backoff
│   │   │   ├── types/               # Unified contracts & response schemas
│   │   │   └── index.ts             # Public Core API
│   │   ├── tests/                   # 20 Core unit tests
│   │   └── package.json
│   │
│   ├── mcp/                         # @free-ai-gateway/mcp
│   │   ├── AGENTS.md                # Agentic guidelines for @free-ai-gateway/mcp
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── tools/               # generate, search, embed, rerank, analyze-image
│   │   │   ├── resources/           # capabilities, models catalog
│   │   │   ├── server.ts            # FreeAiMcpServer handler
│   │   │   └── index.ts
│   │   ├── tests/                   # 3 MCP server tests
│   │   └── package.json
│   │
│   ├── skills/                      # @free-ai-gateway/skills
│   │   ├── AGENTS.md                # Agentic guidelines for @free-ai-gateway/skills
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── skills/              # Built-in skills (free-ai-gateway, scaffolding, mcp)
│   │   │   ├── installer.ts         # Multi-target installer
│   │   │   ├── cli.ts               # CLI executable (free-ai-skills)
│   │   │   └── index.ts
│   │   ├── tests/                   # 4 Skills tests
│   │   └── package.json
│   │
│   └── cli/                         # @free-ai-gateway/cli
│       ├── AGENTS.md                # Agentic guidelines for @free-ai-gateway/cli
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── commands/            # prompt, chat, models, doctor, skills
│       │   ├── cli.ts               # Argument parsing & dispatcher
│       │   ├── bin.ts               # CLI executable (free-ai, freeai)
│       │   └── index.ts
│       ├── tests/                   # 4 CLI tests
│       └── package.json
│
├── apps/
│   └── gateway/                     # @free-ai-gateway/gateway (HTTP App)
│       ├── AGENTS.md                # Agentic guidelines for @free-ai-gateway/gateway
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── adapters/            # OpenAI chat response normalizer
│       │   ├── api/
│       │   │   ├── routes/          # Fastify route modules & RouteLoader
│       │   │   └── server.ts        # Server factory, timing hooks, 404 handler
│       │   ├── jobs/                # Background JobScheduler & reverify worker
│       │   └── index.ts
│       ├── tests/                   # 5 Gateway HTTP tests
│       ├── Dockerfile               # Monorepo container builder
│       └── package.json
│
├── tests/
│   └── e2e/                         # 5 Cross-package E2E integration tests
│
├── AGENTS.md                        # Monorepo Root Agentic Guidelines
├── CLAUDE.md                        # Claude Code Instructions
├── .agents/                         # Workspace Skills Directory
├── .github/workflows/ci.yml         # Matrix CI workflow
├── docker-compose.yml
├── package.json                     # Root workspace definition
├── tsconfig.base.json               # Shared TypeScript compiler settings
└── README.md

🤝 Community & Governance

• 📖 Architecture Blueprint: Deep dive into the internal system design and data flow.
• 🎓 Developer & Learning Guide: Tutorials, programmatic usage, and SDK patterns.
• 🗺️ Product Roadmap: Planned milestones, distributed state, and upcoming features.
• 💬 Support Guide: Troubleshooting, community discussions, and help channels.
• 🏛️ Project Governance: Decision-making process, maintainer roles, and release policies.
• ✍️ Contributing Guide: Step-by-step instructions for adding new provider adapters.
• 🔒 Security Policy: Vulnerability disclosure guidelines.
• 📜 Code of Conduct: Community standards and expectations.

👤 Author

Created and maintained with ❤️ by Md. Mahedi Zaman Zaber.

📄 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.