Venice Text-Model Routing

This skill encodes the decision logic for "which Venice text model do I call?" — the routing layer that sits above venice-chat (the call surface) and consumes venice-models (the discovery API).

Primary use case: a local agent receives a prompt, decides whether the local model can handle it, and — if not — picks the cheapest Venice model that satisfies the privacy / modality / capability requirements.

Snapshot freshness

Before applying the matrix below, read snapshots/text-routing.json. If the file is missing, or snapshot_date is older than 30 days, run python scripts/refresh_routing.py to regenerate it from GET /models?type=text + GET /models/traits?type=text. Otherwise trust the cached file — do not hit /models on every routing decision.

refresh_routing.py requires VENICE_API_KEY in the environment and rewrites both snapshots/text-routing.json and routing-matrix.md. Run it once on first install, then ~monthly (CI nightly is also fine).

When to load this skill

• Picking a Venice text model from a prompt at runtime.
• Building a local-first agent that escalates to Venice for hard prompts.
• Deciding privacy tier (anonymized vs private vs TEE vs E2EE).
• Choosing between a trait shortcut (default_reasoning, most_intelligent, …) and a hand-filtered candidate.