FLAME-router

🔥 FLAME-router — Tool Lane vs Agent Lane Routing

Skill ID: FLAME-router · Version: 2026.07.25 · Axis: routing Ratified: 2026-07-24 by Arif (F13 SOVEREIGN) Upgraded: 2026-07-25 — 4-core insight doctrine from Mage-Flow architecture session Load when: Any agent needs to decide between FLAME (tool lane) and constitutional cascade (agent lane). Do NOT load for: Constitutional judgment, SEAL/HOLD decisions, human-facing responses.

The Clean Division of Labor (Arif-ratified 2026-07-24)

What FLAME Answers

"Can something respond right now, cheaply, without breaking rate limits?"

FLAME never answers: "Is this answer true or authorized?"

The Two-Lane Rule

TOOL LANE (FLAME):     Tools, workers, batch jobs, classifiers, embedders.
                       Cascading availability ladder — 12 tiers.
                       RM0. Hit-rate adaptive. ADVISORY output only.
                       Zero constitutional authority.

AGENT LANE (cascade):  Agents, reasoning, judgment, governance.
                       TokenRouter→MiniMax→MiMo→Groq→Gemini→Cerebras→SEA-LION→Ollama→HOLD.
                       F1-F13 gated. Constitutional.

⚔️ FOUR-CORE INSIGHT DOCTRINE (2026-07-25)

Forged from Mage-Flow architecture session. These are structural constraints, not tips. Every FLAME agent MUST internalize these before routing any inference.

1. PROFILE > PING — Task Fitness Over Latency

The Trap: Agents default to min(latency) — pick the fastest model.

The Law: Route by max(task_fitness) first, then min(cost) second.

Enforcement: TASK_CLASS_CHAINS in flame_router.py reorders tiers at call-time. Agents must pass task_class parameter when calling FLAME.

Anti-pattern: flame.call(prompt) without task_class → suboptimal routing. Correct: flame.call(prompt, task_class="classification") or task_class="bm_malay".

2. IDLE = HARAM — Zero-Idle-Cost Is a Constitutional Gate

The Trap: Agents see "$0.90/hr GPU = cheap" and recommend Hugging Face Endpoints.

The Law: W_scar (financial risk to 888) is an absolute variable. If a GPU sits idle 23 hours/day at $0.90/hr, that's $648/month wasted — a direct F1 AMANAH violation.

Enforcement:

• scale-to-zero and zero idle cost are HARD REQUIREMENTS for any external GPU integration
• Agents proposing GPU infrastructure MUST compute W_scar = idle_hours_per_day × hourly_cost × 30
• If W_scar > $10/month, the proposal is INADMISSIBLE
• Exception: only if a hard auto-pause mechanism (not a prompt, not a config — executable code) guarantees zero billing during idle

Approved pattern: Modal.com serverless GPU (pay-per-second, $0 idle) Rejected pattern: Hugging Face Endpoints (pay-per-hour, continuous billing) Rejected pattern: AWS SageMaker real-time endpoint (pay-per-instance, continuous)

3. PHYSICAL DEFENSE — Code, Not Prompts

The Trap: Security boundaries enforced via system prompt or LLM behavior.

The Law: Every security boundary between FLAME and governed surfaces MUST be hardcoded in executable code — not documented, not prompted, not configured.

The Zero-Fly Zone (implemented in flame_router.py:ZeroFlyZone):

Layer 1 — CALLER IDENTITY GATE (hardcoded set):
  arif_judge, arif_seal, arif_init, arif_forge
  well_assess_homeostasis, well_validate_vitality, well_guard_dignity
  capital_wisdom, capital_diagnose, capital_ledger
  → REJECT before HTTP. No configuration can override.

Layer 2 — VERB PATTERN GATE (hardcoded patterns):
  "arif_judge", "arif_seal", "well_", "forge_execute",
  "forge_approve", "forge_seal", "forge_vault", "forge_lock"
  → Pattern match on caller_id. Immediate REJECT.

Layer 3 — CONTENT SENSITIVITY GATE (hardcoded triggers):
  "mykad", "nric", "petronas internal", "password:", "token:"
  → SOVEREIGN data NEVER leaves VPS through FLAME.

Why this matters: A model rotation or jailbreak cannot bypass hardcoded Python checks. A system prompt can be ignored. A set lookup cannot.

Current state: 20 FORBIDDEN_CALLERS + 31 FORBIDDEN_VERB_PATTERNS + 17 SOVEREIGN_CONTENT_TRIGGERS. All executed at line 1125 of flame_router.py — BEFORE any HTTP call.

4. BLIND CIRCUIT BREAKER — Provider-Specific Error Vocabulary

The Trap: Conventional exponential backoff on HTTP 429 — relies on standard headers.

The Law: When providers don't implement standard rate-limit headers (Cloudflare Workers AI, MiniMax body codes), build provider-specific error vocabulary parsers. Read the response BODY, not just the HTTP status code.

Pattern:

PROVIDER_ERROR_VOCABULARY = {
    "cloudflare": {
        "rate_limit_body_codes": [3036, 1027],
        "auth_failure_codes": [10000],
    },
    "minimax": {
        "rate_limit_body_codes": [1004],
        "quota_exhausted_codes": [1008],
    },
}

def detect_rate_limit(provider: str, status_code: int, body: dict) -> bool:
    vocab = PROVIDER_ERROR_VOCABULARY.get(provider, {})
    rate_codes = vocab.get("rate_limit_body_codes", [])
    if status_code == 429:
        return True  # standard
    if body.get("code") in rate_codes:
        return True  # provider-specific
    return False

Why this matters: Exponential backoff on 429 is useless if the provider never sends Retry-After or RateLimit-Reset headers. The circuit breaker must learn each provider's unique error language.

Current state: FLAME's OpenRouter tier has 429 cooldown logic. Other providers fall through to generic "HTTP != 200" → skip tier. Needs upgrade for body-code parsing.

FLAME Tier Structure (2026-07-25)

Tiers are a cascading availability ladder, not a reasoning hierarchy. Higher tiers are more trusted/available — not "smarter." The chain exists so something always responds.

T1-T5:  Core — Groq (2 tiers) + SEA-LION (3 tiers) = fastest + BM-native
T6-T7:  Core — Gemini flash + Cerebras gemma = general + volume
T8-T10: Experimental — gpt-oss-120b variants (low-weight)
T11:    OpenRouter :free — gap-fill bridge (Cohere, InclusionAI, Poolside, NVIDIA)
T12:    Ollama qwen2.5-coder:3b — local survival knife

Decision Matrix

Task-Class Chains (reorder tiers by task type)

flame --task-class coding "Write a function to..."
flame --task-class bm_malay "Terangkan maksud..."  
flame --task-class gap_fill "Query needing unique free model"

Constitutional Boundary

FLAME NEVER:

• Judges (arifOS only — GOVERNED_USE["constitutional_judgment"])
• Seals (VAULT999 only — GOVERNED_USE["constitutional_seal"])
• Primary epistemic reasoning (Hermes domain)
• Human-life/substrate reasoning (WELL domain)
• Sovereign data (PII, myKad, PETRONAS — SENSITIVITY hard gate)
• Execution authorization (A-FORGE lease domain)
• Uses paid models (RM0 hard gate)
• Uses OpenRouter auto/auto-beta router (F11 AUDITABILITY violation)
• Routes agent work (use agent cascade)

FLAME ONLY:

• Advisory, classification, extraction, summarization, embedding
• Stateless text → transform → output
• ADVISORY authority — consumers MUST validate
• Emergency fallback when governed cascade exhausted

FLAME Commands

free-llm "prompt"                          # Single inference
free-llm --mode probe                      # Health check all 12 tiers
free-llm --mode stats                      # Hit-rate dashboard
free-llm --mode snapshot-checksum          # Integrity hash
free-llm --batch file.txt                  # Batch processing
free-llm --task-class coding "prompt"      # Task-class chain reorder
free-llm --sensitivity PUBLIC "prompt"     # Declare data sensitivity
free-llm --caller hermes_fact_check "..."  # Caller identity for audit

ATLAS333 Context

FLAME activates 8 ATLAS333 paradoxes (Memory: M6,M7,M8 · Mind: R1,R4,R7 · Contour: C1,C2). Key tensions: speed vs. quality (R1), stability vs. reordering (M6), free access vs. constitutional boundary (C1).

When FLAME returns HOLD

1. Try agent lane cascade (may have different model availability)
2. Check FLAME health: free-llm --mode probe
3. Check hit-rates: free-llm --mode stats
4. If all tiers exhausted: escalate to agent lane with degraded flag

Reference

• Implementation: /root/A-FORGE/flame/flame_router.py (2015 lines)
• Zero-Fly Zone: ZeroFlyZone class, lines 240-416 — executable constitutional law
• Task-class chains: TASK_CLASS_CHAINS, lines 421-492
• Full surface map: /root/HERMES/skills/devops/flame-free-loop-mesh/references/81-surface-flame-map.md