Auto-routing

Auto-routing sends your searches to the providers that answer them best. Turn it on, and your agent searches smarter without changing a line.

To see auto-routing in action, try the Telem search demo.

What auto-routing does

Search providers are not equally good at every kind of question. One provider finds news well. Another provider finds social media well. Telem benchmarks the search providers regularly on each kind of question and routes to the ones that perform best.

Telem typically routes these kinds of questions:

• News
• Social media
• Entities (people, companies)
• Financial information
• Papers
• Facts
• ...

Telem also routes searches limited to one site, such as LinkedIn, Reddit, X, Google Maps, Zillow, etc., when your agent asks for that site.

Examples:

• Your agent searches for “Apple’s 10-K risk factors for fiscal 2025”. Telem sends the search to the providers that do best on financial filings.
• Your agent searches for “engineering leaders at Anthropic” and asks for LinkedIn. Telem sends the search to the providers that do best on LinkedIn.
• Your agent searches for “what people on Reddit say about the Framework laptop” and asks for Reddit. Telem sends the search to the providers that do best on Reddit.

What you get

With auto-routing on, a search of one of the kinds above calls a few chosen providers. You get these results:

• Answers from the right providers. The providers that do best on that kind of question answer it.
• Fewer web searches and fetches. A search of one of these kinds runs on fewer providers, so fewer web searches and fetches happen.
• Fewer tokens. Dropping the weaker providers filters out low-quality information before your agent reads or reasons about it.

Turn it on, and your agent is at least as good as before, often at a lower cost.

For the request-level details, see Search parameters.

Questions

Does auto-routing cost extra?

Actually, less. Your agent never costs more than it does today, and it usually costs less, because fewer providers run. Telem buys provider capacity in bulk, so the price per call is lower than buying it yourself.

Can I still choose the providers?

Yes. Your include and exclude lists still apply. Telem chooses only from the providers that you allow.

What happens if a provider is down?

Telem falls back automatically. If a provider fails, the other chosen providers answer, and the search does not stop.

Turn it off

The installer turns auto-routing on by default. accuracy is the only mode at this time. latency and search_cost routing are coming shortly.

With the installer

Give the flag --auto-routing off.

Example:

npm create @telemai -- --auto-routing off

With the config file

Set the key autoRouting to off in .telem/telem.json, or remove the key. Use the file in your project, or the file in your home directory.

{
  "autoRouting": "off"
}

With an environment variable

Set TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING to off.

export TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING=off

For this setting, the environment variable has priority over the config files. For every other setting, the files have priority. Thus you can change the mode for one shell and not edit a file.

Where each client reads the setting

Client	Where to set auto-routing
OpenCode, Pi, Claude Code, Codex and Hermes plugins	autoRouting in .telem/telem.json, or TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING
OpenClaw plugin	The Telem Auto-Routing setting in the plugin config, or TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING. OpenClaw does not read .telem/telem.json.
Python SDK	The auto_routing argument of client.search(...), or TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING
JavaScript SDK	The autoRouting option of telem.search(...), or TELEM_AUTO_ROUTING. The JavaScript SDK does not read .telem/telem.json.

For all the settings and their order, see Configuring the plugins and the SDK.