The thing that scares people off AI is the bill. Point a powerful model at every little question and the cost runs away. I fixed that with a router that reads each question first and sends it to the cheapest model that can handle it. Here is how.

Six parts, and it is mostly about reading before you spend.

1. Read the question before you answer it. A cheap, fast classifier looks at each incoming question and decides how hard it really is.
2. Give it three lanes. Easy questions go to a small, cheap model. Standard ones to a mid model. Only the genuinely hard ones reach the expensive one.
3. Default to cheap. Most questions are easy. Answering them on a small model is where the savings live.
4. Escalate only when needed. The big model is a scalpel, not a default. It runs when the question actually calls for it.
5. Break hard questions up. A complex question gets split into smaller sub-questions the cheaper models can each handle.
6. Set a hard ceiling. A dollar cap per day means the system physically cannot surprise you on the invoice.

This is how you run real AI features on a known monthly bill instead of a mystery. It sits in front of any support bot, assistant, or automation. The router above is the whole governor, free to copy.

From a live training platform. Everything described here is something I actually run; nothing on this bench is theoretical.