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Useful in minutes, without a migration

A real local InferCrane terminal run connecting an externally owned vLLM-compatible worker, sending a request, inspecting content-free request evidence, and running deterministic Doctor diagnostics. The recording is generated from scripts/demo-connect.sh against GPU-free local fixtures. It proves the product workflow, not real-runtime performance. Connect an existing endpoint in observe-only mode. InferCrane performs bounded discovery and records the result without publishing a route or taking provider ownership.
When discovery cannot determine a physical model safely, provide it explicitly:
connect is intentionally conservative. Runtime detection is reported only when the endpoint provides grounded signals. Unknown capability remains unknown rather than being inferred from a URL.

Turn evidence into a daily workflow

Doctor evaluates persisted Evidence → Rule → Finding logic. Request Inspector reconstructs the logical endpoint, resolved target, revision or upstream where known, queue and response timing, tokens, retry count, and fallback reason. Prompt and output content are not recorded by default. After reviewing health and evidence, transfer routing ownership explicitly:
The workload remains externally managed: InferCrane does not create, scale, update, or delete it.

Use a user-managed LiteLLM gateway

LiteLLM can sit behind InferCrane as an optional external OpenAI-compatible gateway:
InferCrane does not bundle, fork, install, or license LiteLLM. The operator supplies and manages the gateway and its provider credentials. This keeps the core integration generic: the same connection path works with another compatible gateway when it passes discovery and health checks.
Connecting an endpoint does not prove every protocol or model behavior. Qualify streaming, tool calls, structured output, cancellation, and model identity for the exact upstream before production traffic. The current simple discovery path requires the control plane to read /v1/models without an upstream credential. Keep authenticated gateways externally configured until a reference-only upstream credential binding is qualified; never place credentials in the endpoint URL.

Why this pattern matters

  • Platform teams can observe one workload before adopting a fleet.
  • vLLM operators can retain their existing compute and container setup.
  • LiteLLM users can retain broad managed-provider translation while InferCrane owns durable operational evidence and logical endpoint identity.
  • Migration-sensitive teams can progress from observe-only to traffic-managed ownership without transferring provider lifecycle.