Cline
Track usage, control costs, and add guardrails to your Cline coding agent
What is Cline?
Cline is an AI coding assistant that integrates directly into your VS Code environment, providing autonomous coding capabilities—it can create and edit files, run commands, and complete multi-step tasks with your approval. It supports any OpenAI-compatible provider through its API settings.
By routing Cline through FastRouter, you get:
100+ models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta, Groq, Mistral, and more through one endpoint—including coding models like Grok Code Fast 1
Observability for every request: cost, tokens, latency, and model selection tracked in real time
Reliability through automatic failover across providers, response caching, and intelligent routing
Governance with per-key budgets, rate limits, model restrictions, role-based access, and project isolation
This guide covers configuring the Cline VS Code extension to use FastRouter as an OpenAI-compatible provider.
Prerequisites
A FastRouter.ai account (sign up)
VS Code with the Cline extension installed
Quick Start
Step 1: Get Your FastRouter API Key
Sign up or log in at fastrouter.ai
Navigate to your project's Keys page
Click Create User Key
Copy the key immediately. FastRouter does not display the key again after creation.
Step 2: Configure the API Provider
Open Cline Settings in VS Code and configure:
Select: Bring my own API key
API Provider: select OpenAI Compatible
Base URL:
API Key: paste your FastRouter API key
Model ID: enter a FastRouter model slug, for example:
Step 3: Start a Task
Give Cline a task. All requests now route through FastRouter, and every request, token count, and cost appears in your FastRouter Dashboard.
Use Cline with 100+ Models
FastRouter uses the provider/model-name format. Change the Model ID in Cline's settings to any catalog slug:
Check the FastRouter Model Catalog for available models and input modalities (text, image, file).
Automatic Model Selection
Let FastRouter pick the best model for each request based on query complexity, domain, and cost. Use this Model ID:
Explore automatic model selection
FAQs
Configuration & Setup
Can I use multiple models with the same API key?
Yes. The API key controls access and budget. Change the Model ID in Cline's settings at any time—no key changes needed.
Can I restrict a key to only use specific models?
Yes. When creating or editing a key, use the Select Models setting to limit which models the key can access. FastRouter rejects requests to unauthorized models.
My requests fail after setup. What should I check?
Verify the Base URL is exactly https://api.fastrouter.ai/api/v1, the API key is correct, and the Model ID matches a FastRouter catalog slug exactly (including the provider prefix). Also make sure the Cline extension is updated to the latest version.
Costs & Budgeting
Cline makes many requests per task. How do I keep costs under control?
Set a budget and rate limit on the key you use with Cline. For team rollouts, create separate projects with project-scoped keys, and use Dynamic Tags for finer-grained attribution. The Dashboard breaks down costs by project, key, model, and tag.
What happens when a key exceeds its budget?
FastRouter blocks further requests until the budget resets (if a reset interval is configured) or an admin increases the limit.
Privacy & Security
Is my code sent to FastRouter's servers?
FastRouter acts as a pass-through gateway. Requests are routed to the model provider and responses are returned to your client. Content logging can be disabled per key for sensitive workloads. See the Disable Content Logging option in key settings.
Next Steps
Set up Fallback Models for high availability
Configure Alerts for spend and performance monitoring
Run a Free Audit on your existing LLM traffic to identify savings
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