Model routing as cost control

Model routing means sending different AI tasks to different model tiers instead of defaulting every step to the most capable and expensive model. Why it matters: Frontier-model pricing, cached input discounts, and batch discounts make cost-aware routing a practical design concern for AI products and agent workflows.

Try this: Split one AI workflow into planning, extraction, summarization, verification, and final-writing steps, then decide which steps actually require a flagship model.