Route OpenClaw to Claude Haiku for Simple Tasks
Claude 3.5 Haiku costs $0.25/MTok input vs Opus at $15/MTok — that's 60x cheaper. For file reads, status checks, and simple code reviews, Haiku works just as well. RelayPlane routes these automatically.
When Haiku Works Just Fine
✓ Great for Haiku
- • Reading and summarizing files
- • Directory listings
- • Simple code formatting
- • Status checks and git operations
- • Linting and style fixes
- • Simple search/replace tasks
- • Documentation lookups
↑ Keep on Opus/Sonnet
- • Complex architecture decisions
- • Multi-file refactoring
- • Debugging tricky issues
- • Security analysis
- • Performance optimization
- • Novel algorithm design
- • Complex reasoning chains
Automatic Haiku Routing Setup
RelayPlane's proxy automatically classifies requests and routes simple ones to Haiku. No manual configuration needed.
$
npm install -g @relayplane/proxy && relayplane-proxy$
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:4801The proxy uses cascade routing by default: tries Haiku first for simple tasks, escalates to Sonnet or Opus if needed. You can customize the cascade in ~/.relayplane/config.json.
The Cost Math
| Model | Input/MTok | Output/MTok | vs Opus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 4 Opus | $15.00 | $75.00 | baseline |
| Claude 4 Sonnet | $3.00 | $15.00 | 5x cheaper |
| Claude 3.5 Haiku | $0.25 | $1.25 | 60x cheaper |
Stop paying Opus prices for file reads
Install RelayPlane, let it route simple tasks to Haiku automatically.