Product and status
What LiteGate brings together
Section titled “What LiteGate brings together”A native gateway and control center for macOS, Windows and Linux: provider connections, OS-backed credentials, routing, a built-in chat and optional access from trusted devices. User models run in external engines or cloud providers; LiteGate does not download or execute their weights. Its internal local routing classifier is the exception.
Development status
Section titled “Development status”The 27 September 2026 integration audit records gateway/protocol/routing work and desktop, chat, Smart, LAN and release infrastructure as implemented. Local macOS checks and selected cross-platform checks have passed. This does not establish public release readiness: final Windows/Linux native checks, signing, notarization, updater-key setup and clean-machine release validation remain open. No public installer is offered on this website.
Four routing modes
Section titled “Four routing modes”| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Manual | Choose a model explicitly. |
| Smart | Rank eligible models locally, after privacy and capability checks. Uncertainty follows deterministic eligible fallback rules. |
| Private | Prefer local models; allow remote providers only when explicitly approved by policy. |
| Local | Exclude all remote targets before credentials or network access. Local refers to the LiteGate host, not other LAN machines. |
Ordered fallback only applies to allowed recoverable failures before the first visible response event. An interrupted response is never silently restarted after that point. Each decision records selected and rejected routes and actual attempts.
The integrated Smart classifier is deterministic. A richer multilingual semantic classifier for Spanish, English and mixed-language prompts is planned after the initial signed beta. Manual operation does not depend on it; no savings or quality improvement is promised without evaluation.
Desktop, chat and portable context
Section titled “Desktop, chat and portable context”The menu-bar/tray application manages connections, settings and diagnostics. Closing a window leaves the gateway running. Built-in chat uses the same gateway as external tools, with local history, streaming, cancellation, editing, branches, export and deletion.
Portable messages, tool calls and results can move between compatible providers with explicit conversion-loss reporting. Private reasoning, internal model state and provider caches cannot be transferred as general conversation context.
Credentials and trusted devices
Section titled “Credentials and trusted devices”Provider secrets belong in the operating system credential store. Tools use separate LiteGate keys with scopes, model/route restrictions, revocation and limits; they do not receive upstream secrets. LAN is opt-in, uses TLS and keeps administration local. Public internet hosting and a multi-tenant cloud service are outside the initial product scope.
Usage, performance and subscriptions
Section titled “Usage, performance and subscriptions”Token usage, attempts, routing decisions and estimated cost are part of the integrated accounting foundation. The expanded product plan adds time to first token, generation tokens/s, total latency and filters by provider, model, explicitly attributed tool/project and period. Detailed coverage must be verified for each release.
Provider-reported usage, estimates and confirmed billing must remain distinct. Unknown values are not zero. Failed, cancelled and fallback attempts can also consume tokens. Budget alerts use available estimates; they do not guarantee the final provider invoice. Token limits and monetary limits are separate.
A manual subscription inventory is planned, recording fixed expense and renewal dates separately from variable API consumption. Provider synchronization is later work. LiteGate does not purchase or cancel subscriptions. Telemetry covers traffic through the gateway, not all account activity, and excludes prompt and response bodies by default.
Subscription connections: a separate workstream
Section titled “Subscription connections: a separate workstream”A chat subscription does not automatically grant API access. Phase 10 explores provider-supported subscription connections with secure authentication profiles and managed runtimes. An internal macOS implementation has local chat-only compatibility evidence for specific external Codex and Claude Code versions; it is not a generally available integration.
Clean-install managed runtimes, the final supported Claude backend, explicitly authorized personal LAN access, client-side tools and sandboxed-agent profiles still have open delivery gates. These require provider-specific permission and compatibility validation; they are not interchangeable with ordinary API credentials.
Distribution and access
Section titled “Distribution and access”The website is public; the source repository is currently private. Public download links will only appear after a validated release. Signed packages, stable/beta channels, checksums, release notes and verified updates use canonical release metadata. See installation for the initial platform matrix.