You Don't Need to Choose Between a Gateway and an Agent Framework

When I first published Swarm on GitHub, most questions weren't about Rust or MCP. They were about timing and categorization: "We just need a lightweight gateway for multi-provider routing; agents feel like overkill." "We already run an orchestration framework; why would we replace our proxy?" This reaction highlights a false dichotomy currently plaguing the AI infrastructure ecosystem: the assumption that a gateway and an agent orchestrator must be two completely different products. In practice, teams rarely wake up needing full-blown multi-agent autonomous swarms on Day 1. But when they start with a standalone proxy, they inevitably hit a wall — patching together Python microservices, external vector state stores, MCP bridges, and ad-hoc eval scripts. Every evolution requires a rewrite. The core premise of Swarm is different: a single, pure-Rust runtime where you don't choose between a gateway and an orchestrator — you simply choose which capabilities to turn on. The AI Adoption Ladder Most engineering teams evolve their LLM stack along a predictable trajectory: Rung 1: OpenAI-Compatible Gateway (Drop-in replacement for hardcoded SDKs) └── Rung 2: Multi-Provider Fallbacks (Groq, Gemini, Ollama, vLLM via TOML) └── Rung 3: Stateful Sessions (Previous response chaining & context) └── Rung 4: Native MCP Tools (SSE + Streamable HTTP tool execution) └── Rung 5: Multi-Agent DAGs (Planner + Executor + Specialists) └── Rung 6: Built-in Evals (LLM-as-a-Judge & policy gates) You can stop at any rung and have a lean, production-grade binary. When you're ready for the next level, you change a configuration flag — not your architectural foundation. Rung 1 — Just a Low-Latency Gateway If your immediate goal is simply eliminating hardcoded API keys and single-vendor SDK locks, Swarm acts as an OpenAI-compatible drop-in front door with sub-millisecond native routing overhead. # Spin up the gateway in seconds ./kickstart/gateway_kickstart/01_launch_gateway.sh curl -X POST http://loc