Cheaplane 🛣️

Keep your premium subscription on the main thread. Offload the grunt work to cheap models — Cheaplane even picks the right one for you. Stop burning premium tokens on boilerplate.

Cheaplane is a tiny single-file MCP server (~250 lines, stdlib + mcp only) that gives your main agent — e.g. Claude Code on a Max subscription — one extra tool: delegate. Your agent keeps doing the thinking (planning, architecture, final review) and hands replaceable grunt work — boilerplate code, formatting, translation, summarizing long docs — to cheap models behind a local LiteLLM proxy (DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, …). Think of it as a cheap intern for your premium agent — it churns out the boring parts while you keep thinking.

The trick that makes it safe: the delegated calls and your subscription live in physically separate processes and never share credentials. (why that matters ⬇️)

The trick that makes it effortless: auto-routing. delegate(task) picks the right cheap model from the task itself — code → DeepSeek, long docs → Kimi, Chinese → Qwen. (how ⬇️)

The trick that makes it stick: a per-turn reminder hook so your agent doesn't forget the tool exists — the part most "delegate" tools skip. And a savings ledger shows you what it kept off your quota.

See it in action — your agent hands a chore over; auto-routing sends it to the cheap code model:

delegate("convert to a TypeScript interface: {id, name, email, isAdmin, roles[]}")

interface User {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  isAdmin: boolean;
  roles: string[];
}

_{↑ a real call's output — not a mockup, and no model picked by hand. That token cost ~90× less than your premium model, and your subscription quota never moved.}

The problem

Premium models earn their price on hard problems — but every token counts against your plan, and you burn through quota on churn: reformatting JSON, translating UI strings, summarizing a doc you'll read once. The usual "just use a cheap model" setups force an ugly choice:

• Downgrade the whole agent → you lose main-thread quality on the work that actually matters.
• Route everything through an API key → you stop using the subscription you're already paying for.

Cheaplane keeps the sweet spot: premium main thread for judgment + cheap models for the churn + billing that physically can't cross.

How Cheaplane compares

The popular 2026 move is to swap your whole agent onto a cheap model (DeepClaude-style). Great for raw cost — but it downgrades the thread you actually think with, breaks your other MCP tools, and doesn't even apply if you're on a Pro/Max subscription. Cheaplane takes the opposite bet:

... View full README on GitHub