Router.Africa — Documentation Index

One repo, four areas: /product for the business, /architecture for the build decisions and stack, /infra for the Bifrost gateway deployment that implements one piece of it, and /planning for the backlog. Suggested structure below — file names in parentheses are what to rename each document to when you add it.

/docs
  /product
    design-doc.md                    (openrouter-africa-design-doc.md)
    business-model.md                (openrouter-africa-business-model-doc.md)
    website-copy.md                  (router-africa-usp-website-copy.md)
    architecture.svg                 (router-africa-architecture.svg)
    openrouter-api-comparison.md     (competitive / API-contract reference)
    pricing-model.md                 (router-africa-pricing-model.md)
    dashboard-scope.md               (router-africa-dashboard-scope.md)
    api-docs-scope.md                scope of the developer-facing API docs (backlog #10)
    api-surface.md                   which endpoints are public at launch (proposed)
  /architecture
    decisions-log.md                 (router-africa-decisions-log.md)   <- source of truth for decisions
    backend-scope.md                 service map, data map, request flows
    future-optimizations.md          deferred optimizations + the hooks to build now
    tech-stack.md                    (router-africa-tech-stack.md)       <- terse "what", no rationale
  /infra
    installation-as-built.md         (bifrost-installation-as-built.md)   <- start here
    plugins-and-extensibility.md     (bifrost-plugins-and-extensibility.md)
    rancher-todo.md                  (rancher-setup-TODO.md)
  /planning
    backlog.md                       (router-africa-planning-backlog.md) <- historical index + status table

Browse in a browser

site/ is a small Astro Starlight site with navigation, search and rendered diagrams: cd site && npm install && npm run dev. See site/README.md.

Where to start

New to the project? product/design-doc.md — the problem, architecture, and Niobi payments integration.
Want the business case? product/business-model.md (partly superseded on pricing — see its banner).
Want to know what’s decided vs. open? architecture/decisions-log.md — the source of truth for architecture decisions, with rationale and rejected alternatives. architecture/tech-stack.md is the terse “what’s used” companion; keep rationale out of it.
Working out billing/pricing mechanics? product/pricing-model.md (daily published rate, FX, markup rules engine). It supersedes the repricing cadence in business-model.md; design-doc.md §5 remains the source of truth for balance semantics.
Building the dashboard? product/dashboard-scope.md.
What’s the project plan status? planning/backlog.md — original 16-item list, annotated with a status table.
Marketing site: built and lives in a separate repo; product/website-copy.md is its source copy.
Designing the customer-facing API? product/openrouter-api-comparison.md — what OpenRouter’s public API does, what Bifrost gives us for free, and what we still have to build.
Writing or planning the developer API docs? product/api-docs-scope.md — audience, content scope, dependencies, and where it lives (router.africa/docs, hand-written, source in the website repo).
Which endpoints are public? product/api-surface.md — OpenRouter’s endpoints vs ours, and what we document at launch.
Working on the live server? infra/installation-as-built.md is the single source of truth for what’s actually deployed — commands, the validated values.yaml, and the real issues hit during install and how they were fixed. There is no separate “planning” deployment guide anymore; earlier draft guides were removed once they diverged from what was actually built, to avoid anyone following stale, incorrect YAML.
Want to change something about the gateway? Check infra/plugins-and-extensibility.md before touching source code — most things are a values.yaml change.
Setting up Rancher later? infra/rancher-todo.md.

Notes on file status

Product docs (design-doc.md, business-model.md, website-copy.md) are not Bifrost-specific — they describe Router.Africa the product (positioning, pricing, market) independent of which gateway technology implements the routing layer.

Open items across all docs (as of last update)

Architecture open items are tracked in architecture/decisions-log.md (Open table): currently only the deferred prompt/response retention details (see backlog item 17). Deferred optimizations and the hooks that keep them cheap are in architecture/future-optimizations.md. Infra/other items below.

Provider API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Fireworks) not yet added to the live gateway
Postgres backup job not yet set up
Rancher import deferred
Niobi payments/billing ledger integration not yet built — the current deployment is the model-routing layer only. Design is settled: own Postgres ledger, with Bifrost virtual keys (1:1 per API key) for rate limits and budgets (see the decisions log).