Claude Code Integration

What is Claude Code + Plexor?

Claude Code is Anthropic's official command-line interface for AI-assisted software development. It provides a powerful terminal-based experience for code generation, debugging, refactoring, and more.

Plexor is an intelligent LLM routing proxy that sits between Claude Code and various AI providers. When you route Claude Code through Plexor, your requests are automatically analyzed and sent to the most cost-effective provider capable of handling them, without sacrificing quality for complex tasks.

Key Benefits

• Cost Savings - Save 60-80% on typical Claude Code usage by routing simple queries to cheaper models
• Quality Preservation - Complex reasoning, multi-file edits, and architecture decisions still go to Claude
• Seamless Integration - Works transparently with your existing Claude Code workflow
• Real-time Analytics - Track your savings and usage patterns in real-time
• Provider Flexibility - Access to multiple providers (Claude, DeepSeek, OpenAI, Mistral, Gemini) through one interface

Installation and Setup

Setting up Plexor with Claude Code takes just a few minutes. The Plexor skill is built into Claude Code and provides slash commands for authentication and configuration.

# In Claude Code terminal
/plexor-login
# Enter your API key when prompted: plx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

# Verify connection
/plexor-status

# Optionally set your preferred mode
/plexor-mode balanced

Slash Commands Reference

Plexor adds the following slash commands to Claude Code for authentication, configuration, and monitoring. All commands are prefixed with /plexor- for easy discovery.

Authentication Commands

Monitoring Commands

Configuration Commands

Quick Reference

# Authentication
/plexor-login              # Authenticate with your API key
/plexor-logout             # Log out and clear credentials

# Monitoring
/plexor-status             # Show stats, savings, and config

# Routing Mode
/plexor-mode eco           # Maximum cost savings
/plexor-mode balanced      # Balance cost and quality (default)
/plexor-mode quality       # Prioritize response quality
/plexor-mode passthrough   # Direct to Claude, no routing

# Provider Override
/plexor-provider auto      # Intelligent routing (default)
/plexor-provider claude    # Force Anthropic Claude
/plexor-provider deepseek  # Force DeepSeek
/plexor-provider openai    # Force OpenAI GPT
/plexor-provider mistral   # Force Mistral AI
/plexor-provider gemini    # Force Google Gemini

# Enable/Disable
/plexor-enabled true       # Enable Plexor proxy
/plexor-enabled false      # Bypass Plexor, direct to Anthropic

# Settings
/plexor-settings           # Open settings menu

How Proxy Routing Works

When you use Claude Code with Plexor enabled, every request passes through Plexor's intelligent routing engine before reaching an LLM provider. Here's how the routing decision is made:

Request Analysis

Each request is analyzed in real-time to determine its complexity and requirements. The analysis considers:

• Query complexity - Simple questions vs. complex reasoning tasks
• Code context - Single file operations vs. multi-file architectural changes
• Token requirements - Short responses vs. lengthy code generation
• Historical patterns - Your usage patterns and preferences
• Current mode - Your selected routing mode (eco, balanced, quality)

Routing Decision Matrix

Response Handling

Regardless of which provider handles your request, responses are returned in a consistent format compatible with the Anthropic Messages API. Plexor adds metadata to each response showing:

• Which provider actually handled the request
• The specific model used
• Actual cost for this request
• Latency information
• The routing mode that was active

Cost Savings and Examples

Real-world savings depend on your usage patterns. Here are typical examples showing cost differences between direct Anthropic API usage and Plexor-routed requests.

Example: Typical Development Session

A 4-hour development session with Claude Code might include:

# Request distribution in a typical session:
Simple questions, explanations:        40%  -> Routed to DeepSeek
Basic code generation:                 25%  -> Routed to DeepSeek
Code review, debugging:                20%  -> Routed to Claude Sonnet
Complex reasoning, architecture:       15%  -> Routed to Claude Opus

# Cost comparison (estimated):
Direct Anthropic API:                  $12.50
Plexor (balanced mode):                $3.75
Savings:                               $8.75 (70%)

Savings by Mode

Tracking Your Savings

Use /plexor-status regularly to monitor your actual savings. The command shows:

Plexor Status
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Connection:     Connected
Account:        warren@example.com
Mode:           balanced
Provider:       auto
Proxy:          enabled

Session Statistics
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Requests:       127
Input tokens:   245,832
Output tokens:  89,421

Cost Analysis
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Actual cost:    $2.34
Anthropic cost: $8.91
Savings:        $6.57 (74%)

Provider Breakdown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DeepSeek:       68 requests (54%)
Claude Sonnet:  42 requests (33%)
Claude Opus:    17 requests (13%)

Troubleshooting

Common issues and solutions when using Plexor with Claude Code.

Authentication Issues

API Key Not Accepted

If your API key is rejected during /plexor-login:

• Verify you're using a Plexor API key (starts with plx_), not an Anthropic key
• Check the key hasn't been revoked in your API Keys dashboard
• Ensure you copied the complete key without extra spaces
• Try generating a new API key if the issue persists

Connection Timeouts

If you're experiencing connection issues:

• Check your internet connection
• Verify that api.plexor.dev is accessible from your network
• Check if a corporate firewall might be blocking the connection
• Try using /plexor-settings to verify the API URL is correct

Routing Issues

Requests Not Being Optimized

If all requests seem to go to Claude:

• Run /plexor-status to verify proxy is enabled
• Check your mode isn't set to passthrough
• Verify provider isn't forced to claude

# Reset to balanced mode with auto routing
/plexor-mode balanced
/plexor-provider auto
/plexor-enabled true

Quality Concerns

If you notice reduced quality in responses:

• Switch from eco to balanced mode
• For critical work, use quality or passthrough mode
• Force a specific provider with /plexor-provider claude for important tasks

Performance Issues

Increased Latency

Plexor adds minimal latency (typically <100ms) for routing decisions. If you notice significant delays:

• Check your network connection to api.plexor.dev
• The selected provider might be experiencing issues - try a different provider
• Use /plexor-status to see latency statistics

Getting Help

If you continue to experience issues:

• Check the Dashboard for service status
• Review your usage logs for error details
• Contact support through the dashboard with your session ID

Next Steps

• Dashboard - Monitor your usage and savings in real-time
• HTTP API Reference - Use Plexor in custom applications
• MCP Server Setup - Connect Plexor to Claude Desktop
• API Keys - Manage your authentication credentials