A consistent request contract
Define a common envelope for supported operations. Preserve provider-specific options explicitly rather than promising every model has identical capabilities.
Products ASTER Gateway
Unified model access
One gateway. Clearer AI operations.
A consistent interface between your application and the models it depends on. Keep provider integration and routing decisions in one deliberate layer.
In Development
The challenge
A clearer boundary. A better system.
Provider APIs differ in payloads, streaming behavior, limits, and errors. When those differences spread through application code, changing a model becomes an application-wide migration.
The approach
ASTER Gateway
Gateway is the core ASTER engineering direction: a shared request boundary with explicit model selection and provider adapters. The aim is a stable application contract while provider-specific behavior remains inspectable.
Product direction
Designed around the decisions that matter.
Proposed capabilities guide the engineering work. Their implementation is a separate validation step.
Configurable routing
Select a configured model by task and policy. Return the chosen route in request metadata so behavior can be explained.
Provider isolation
Keep credentials, payload translation, and error normalization within adapters. Applications should receive actionable failures without exposing secrets.
Under the surface
Understand the system path.
- 01
Client SDK
Typed request envelope
- 02
API gateway
Validate the boundary
- 03
Routing engine
Select configured model
- 04
Provider adapter
Translate the contract
- 05
AI provider
Execute inference
Engineering considerations
The tradeoffs belong in the design.
- Streaming and cancellation
- Backpressure, client disconnects, and provider cancellation need explicit handling. Time to first token and total latency are different measurements.
- Safe retries
- A retry can duplicate a generation or incur another charge. Retry policy must distinguish a rejected request from an uncertain provider outcome.
- Authentication and budgets
- Scoped keys, tenant isolation, usage accounting, and quotas are proposed controls. Secret rotation and billing reconciliation require separate design and validation.
Practical contexts
Where the architecture earns its place.
AI application backends
Keep a chat or extraction application independent of provider-specific plumbing while retaining the controls it needs.
Model evaluation
Use a shared request shape to compare configured models. Record model version, parameters, and prompts alongside the evaluation.
Development direction
Built in deliberate steps.
In Development
An existing engineering project, now positioned as the core of the ASTER family. This site documents its development direction; production APIs and shipped capabilities have not been validated in this repository.
- PHASE 01
Define the contract
Specify supported operations, adapter interfaces, streaming semantics, and error classes.
- PHASE 02
Validate the request path
Exercise adapters against fixtures and controlled provider requests; instrument route decisions.
- PHASE 03
Explore adaptive policies
Evaluate failover, latency-aware routing, cost budgets, and regional deployment after the core path is reliable.
Proposed sequence. Milestones describe validation goals, not release commitments.
Connected by design
Explore the ecosystem.
Connect with AsteriaX
Build the next
AI application with clarity.
Explore ASTER Gateway or connect about an application workload, technical collaboration, or startup ecosystem opportunity.