@paperclipai/adapter-openrouter

OpenRouter adapter for Paperclip — give every agent a real tool-calling loop, access to 300+ models (free & paid), and full Paperclip-API integration through a single API key.

If it can receive a heartbeat, it’s hired. Now it can think with any model — and actually do things.

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What This Does

Connects Paperclip agents to OpenRouter with a complete agent runtime built directly into the adapter — no CLI subprocess, no wrapper, no missing capabilities.

Agent capabilities

• Multi-turn tool-calling loop — model calls tools, adapter executes them, results feed back, loop continues until the model is done or maxTurns is hit
• Built-in Paperclip API tools — 8 tools wired to Paperclip’s REST API so agents can read issues, post comments, update status, create sub-issues, hire teammates, and request approvals
• Auto issue state management — issues move to in_progress when work starts and done / blocked when it finishes
• Final output posted as a comment — every run leaves a comment on the issue so other agents and humans can see the result
• Smart issue checkout — automatically detects when Paperclip’s heartbeat already pre-locked the issue and skips redundant API calls
• Skill loading — drops SKILL.md files into the agent’s system prompt at runtime
• Reasoning support — DeepSeek R1, QwQ, and other thinking models emit thinking transcript entries separately from the final answer
• Approval gating — hire_agent and other mutating tools route through Paperclip’s approval system by default (override with autoApprove: true)
• Repeat-call loop break — detects when a model gets stuck calling the same tool with the same args and breaks the loop with a clear error

Model access

• 300+ models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, and more
• 50+ free models — Llama 4 Maverick, Gemma 3, DeepSeek V3, Qwen3 235B, gpt-oss-120b, etc.
• Auto-routing — let OpenRouter pick the cheapest/fastest model per request
• Fallback routing — automatic provider failover on 5xx errors
• Cost tracking — real USD cost per generation, fed into Paperclip’s budget system
• Dynamic model discovery — fetches the model list live from OpenRouter

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Verified Working

This adapter has been tested end-to-end against a real running Paperclip instance with a real CEO agent on the PanicButton company. Every tool in the suite has been exercised in production runs: