FreeRide

FreeRide is a local gateway running on http://localhost:11343. It accepts the OpenAI Chat Completions API and forwards to whichever free-tier provider the user has keys for, failing over across providers and keys when one rate limits or errors.

This skill teaches you (the agent) how to detect FreeRide, wire any OpenAI-shaped client against it, diagnose failures, and use its CLI.

Detect that FreeRide is running

In order, cheapest first:

1. Health check — curl -s http://localhost:11343/health. Returns {"ok": true, "version": "0.x.y", "providers": [...]} when up.
2. Process check — lsof -iTCP:11343 -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P 2>/dev/null or ss -tlnp | grep 11343 on Linux.
3. Config presence — ~/.freeride/config.json exists (means FreeRide was installed even if not currently running).

The port 11343 is hard-coded — FreeRide refuses to auto-pick a different port because agent configs (Aider's OPENAI_API_BASE, Continue's apiBase, etc.) are written against this exact value.

Wire any OpenAI-shaped client against it

export OPENAI_API_BASE=http://localhost:11343/v1
export OPENAI_API_KEY=any

The API key value is irrelevant — FreeRide doesn't authenticate inbound requests; it uses the user's real provider keys (which it reads from env vars like OPENROUTER_API_KEY) for outbound calls. Setting any, unused, or any literal string works.

Python (openai SDK)

from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:11343/v1", api_key="any")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openrouter/free",  # or any model from /v1/models
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "hello"}],
)

curl

curl http://localhost:11343/v1/chat/completions \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model": "openrouter/free", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "hi"}]}'

Streaming

"stream": true works. Server emits text/event-stream with data: {...} chunks and a final data: [DONE]. The first chunk is buffered until upstream confirms the stream is real — if upstream fails before the first chunk, FreeRide retries on the next provider/key transparently. After the first chunk has shipped, mid-stream errors propagate as a truncated stream.

Discover available models

curl http://localhost:11343/v1/models

Returns the OpenAI {"object": "list", "data": [...]} shape. Models from all configured providers appear in one flat list, deduped by id. Add ?refresh=true to bypass the 6h cache.

Identify which provider served a request

• Non-streaming: response JSON includes _freeride_provider: "\x3Cname>".
• Streaming: response includes X-FreeRide-Provider: \x3Cname> header.

Useful for debugging: if completions seem off-tone or off-spec, check this field to know whether a fallback kicked in.

CLI reference

freeride serve                  # start gateway on localhost:11343
freeride bind \x3Cagent>           # write gateway URL into agent config
freeride list                   # list available free models, ranked
freeride status                 # show OpenClaw config + cache age (v2)
freeride auto                   # auto-configure OpenClaw (v2)
freeride rotate                 # swap primary if it fails (v2)
freeride telemetry [on|off]     # manage telemetry beacon
freeride-watcher                # background daemon, rotates on failure

freeride bind supports: aider, continue, hermes, openclaw. It writes the agent's config atomically and preserves unrelated keys. After bind, the agent works without further user steps.

Provider env-var setup

Multi-key rotation is supported — pass keys as a JSON array:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY='["sk-or-v1-key1","sk-or-v1-key2"]'

When key 1 hits 429, FreeRide cools it for 120s and uses key 2 next. Cooldowns persist across restarts (~/.freeride/cooldown.json).

Troubleshooting

Failover semantics (for diagnosing why a request went where)

Per request, FreeRide walks (provider, key) pairs in registration order. For each pair:

• RATE_LIMIT or AUTH → mark this key cooling for 120s, advance keys within the same provider.
• MODEL_NOT_FOUND → skip remaining keys for this provider, advance to the next provider (other keys of the same provider won't help).
• QUOTA_EXHAUSTED → advance providers (same as MODEL_NOT_FOUND).
• 5xx / UNAVAILABLE → advance pair.
• OK → ship the response, stamp the provider header.

Once the first chunk of a streaming response has shipped, mid-stream upstream errors propagate as a truncated stream — they do NOT trigger failover (the client has already started receiving content).

Telemetry

On by default. Hourly POST to https://telemetry.free-ride.xyz/v1/beacon with {installation_id, version, os, tokens_served, request_count, providers_active, uptime_hours}. Never sent: prompts, completions, model IDs, API keys, hostnames, IPs.

Opt out: freeride telemetry off.

When the user reports "FreeRide isn't working"

1. curl -s http://localhost:11343/health — is it running?
2. curl -s http://localhost:11343/v1/models | jq '.data | length' — does it know about any models? (zero usually means no provider keys.)
3. Check freeride list — does it surface usable models per provider?
4. Echo provider env vars — env | grep -E '(OPENROUTER|GROQ|NVIDIA|CLOUDFLARE|HF)_'.
5. If a 503 hits during a request, the _freeride_provider field or X-FreeRide-Provider header on the failed attempt's response (if any) tells you who was last tried.

Links

• Source: https://github.com/Shaivpidadi/FreeRideV3
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/freeride-gateway/
• Install: curl -sSL https://api.free-ride.xyz/install.sh | sh