Compatibility: Cross-Dialect Translation Settings

Rolter accepts both the OpenAI and Anthropic wire formats and translates between them and whatever dialect the upstream provider speaks. A few values have no equivalent on the other side of that translation and have to come from somewhere: the compatibility policy is where they come from.

Edit it from Settings → Compatibility in the dashboard, or through the management API.

Anthropic API version#

Sent as the anthropic-version header on every request Rolter translates into the Anthropic dialect. It is forwarded verbatim, so it must be a dated release string such as 2023-06-01.

Anything else is rejected up front, by both the dashboard and the API. A malformed version does not fail loudly at the point you save it — it fails every Anthropic call afterwards, with an opaque error from the upstream.

When no value is stored or configured, the default is the version recorded in Rolter’s specification registry; a database-backed deployment that never saved this setting reads the default its migrations stored, which is the same version today. A native Anthropic request that sends its own anthropic-version keeps it; this value only fills the gap when there is none. Health probes and the provider connection test always send the recorded default rather than this setting: they check that the API answers and accepts the key, which no dated version changes.

Default max tokens#

Anthropic requires max_tokens on every request; OpenAI treats it as optional. When an OpenAI-shaped request that omits it is translated into the Anthropic dialect, this value fills the gap.

Valid range is 1–1000000. A request that sets max_tokens explicitly always wins — this is only the fallback.

API#

Reading is for a superadmin or a security auditor (a deployment role); updating is superadmin only. Every update is audited.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ROLTER_ADMIN_TOKEN" \  https://control.example.com/api/v1/compatibility-policycurl -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer $ROLTER_ADMIN_TOKEN" \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d '{"anthropic_version": "2023-06-01", "default_max_tokens": 4096}' \  https://control.example.com/api/v1/compatibility-policy

The read response also carries restart_required, the list of fields that only take effect after a gateway restart. It is empty today — both fields reach the data plane through the snapshot — but the server owns the list, so the dashboard surfaces a notice whenever it is non-empty rather than hard-coding which fields those are.