Start here

The 0-to-CTO path, what TrustedRouter is, and how to use this pack.

TrustedRouter in one paragraph

TrustedRouter (Lore Hex Corp) sells one OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API in front of 100+ model providers. The claim that sets it apart: the code path that touches your prompt runs in hardware-attested confidential VMs, and you can verify with a nonce that the running binary is the published source. Customers point their SDK at https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1, pick a privacy floor (min_privacy: zdr or confidential) and a model, and pay from prepaid credits.

The three planes

Most onboarding confusion comes from not knowing which plane a piece of code lives in.

flowchart LR
  C["Client / SDK"] -->|"prompt over TLS"| G
  subgraph TEE["Attested gateway: api.trustedrouter.com (quill-cloud-proxy, Go)"]
    G["Gateway in Confidential Space / Nitro / SEV-SNP"]
  end
  G -->|"prompt"| P["Providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Tinfoil, ..."]
  G -->|"metadata only: key hash, model, token counts"| CP
  subgraph CPL["Control plane: trustedrouter.com (quill-router, Python/FastAPI, Cloud Run)"]
    CP["authorize / settle / refund, routing policy, catalog, billing, console"]
  end
  CP --> S[("Spanner: credits, keys, reservations, outboxes")]
  S -->|"outbox drain"| CH[("ClickHouse: analytics")]
  CP -.->|"pilot: regional credit leases"| FP["fastpath (Go)"]

flowchart LR
  C["Client / SDK"] -->|"prompt over TLS"| G
  subgraph TEE["Attested gateway: api.trustedrouter.com (quill-cloud-proxy, Go)"]
    G["Gateway in Confidential Space / Nitro / SEV-SNP"]
  end
  G -->|"prompt"| P["Providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Tinfoil, ..."]
  G -->|"metadata only: key hash, model, token counts"| CP
  subgraph CPL["Control plane: trustedrouter.com (quill-router, Python/FastAPI, Cloud Run)"]
    CP["authorize / settle / refund, routing policy, catalog, billing, console"]
  end
  CP --> S[("Spanner: credits, keys, reservations, outboxes")]
  S -->|"outbox drain"| CH[("ClickHouse: analytics")]
  CP -.->|"pilot: regional credit leases"| FP["fastpath (Go)"]

The numbers, as of 2026-10-19

How to use this manual

Follow the track in the left rail. Each stage assumes the one before it.

1. Hour 1. Read this page, then watch the six explainer videos (about 8 minutes in total).
2. Day 1. Local setup & config gets the app running on your Mac with verified commands. Contributing & tests covers the three CI gates and how a PR reaches production.
3. Week 1. Architecture shows where each module fits. Product surface maps every endpoint and doc. Security & trust explains what the attestation claim proves and what it does not.
4. Month 1. These are the high-risk areas. Money & billing, Data & storage, Infra & deploys.
5. Ecosystem. Platform repos (start with quill-cloud-proxy) and SDKs, apps & benchmarks.
6. Leadership. The CTO view covers history, velocity, the risk register, and a 30/60/90-day plan.

Rules that will bite you on day one

Where the repo's own docs are out of date

The research agents found these discrepancies. Trust the code over the doc until the doc is fixed.

Rebuilding this manual

The source lives in ~/Code/trustedrouter/trustedrouter-onboarding/:

cd ~/Code/trustedrouter/trustedrouter-onboarding
uv run --no-project --with markdown python build.py     # research/*.md -> site/
python3 -m http.server 8765 --directory site             # http://localhost:8765

Edit any chapter in research/, rebuild, and refresh the page. Manim scene sources are in manim/, and its README gives the render commands.