Transforms

OpenRouter has a simple rule for choosing between sending a prompt and sending a list of ChatML messages:

• Choose messages if you want to have OpenRouter apply a recommended instruct template to your prompt, depending on which model serves your request. Available instruct modes include:
  • alpaca: docs
  • llama2: docs
  • airoboros: docs
• Choose prompt if you want to send a custom prompt to the model. This is useful if you want to use a custom instruct template or maintain full control over the prompt submitted to the model.

To help with prompts that exceed the maximum context size of a model, OpenRouter supports a custom parameter called transforms:

typescript
{
  transforms: ["middle-out"], // Compress prompts > context size. This is the default for all models.
  messages: [...], // "prompt" works as well
  model // Works with any model
}

The transforms param is an array of strings that tell OpenRouter to apply a series of transformations to the prompt before sending it to the model. Transformations are applied in-order. Available transforms are:

• middle-out: compress prompts and message chains to the context size. This helps users extend conversations in part because LLMs pay significantly less attention to the middle of sequences anyway. Works by compressing or removing messages in the middle of the prompt. Additionally, it reduces the number of messages to adhere to the model's limit. For instance, Anthropic's Claude models enforce a maximum of 1000 messages.

Note: All OpenRouter models default to using middle-out, unless you exclude this transform by e.g. setting transforms: [] in the request body.