Playground

The Playground is the fastest way to evaluate NemoRouter without writing code. Paste your virtual API key, pick a model, and start chatting — every request runs through the same gateway your production code will use, so you see real latency, real cost headers, and real guardrail behavior.

What it does

The Playground is a single-page chat UI that calls https://api.nemorouter.ai/v1/chat/completions directly from your browser. It's the same endpoint and the same auth model your SDK code uses — there is no separate "test environment". This means:

• Your virtual key's rate limits, budgets, and guardrails apply exactly as they would in production
• Every request shows up in your observability logs with the playground key alias
• Cost headers (x-litellm-response-cost) settle against the same credit balance

Setup

The Playground requires you to paste your virtual API key (sk-nemo-...). The key is stored in your browser's sessionStorage only — it's cleared the moment you close the tab. NemoRouter's servers never see or store playground-pasted keys.

Why paste a key instead of using your login session?

It's a deliberate security decision. Per Rule #15, all LLM inference requests must authenticate with a virtual key — never a master key. Even though you're logged into the dashboard, the dashboard's session token can't make LLM calls. You paste a virtual key so the request is properly attributed, rate-limited, and budget-enforced like any other production call.

Picking a model

The model dropdown lists every model your organization can call right now. Each entry shows the provider, the routing alias (the value you'd pass as model in the API), and a one-line capability summary.

Switching models is instant — the next message you send goes to the new model. There is no provider configuration, no SDK swap, no key rotation.

Parameters

The sidebar lets you tune:

These are passed straight through to the chat-completions endpoint. They behave exactly like they do in your SDK code.

Code generation

Every conversation has a View Code button. It generates the exact SDK code that would reproduce the current message thread — in cURL, Python, Node.js, or any of 15 supported languages. This is the canonical bridge between exploration and integration: prototype in the playground, copy the code, paste into your codebase.

The generated code reads from 04-nemoroutersdk/examples/ (the SDK examples skill source of truth), so what you see in the playground is what runs in your production app.

Observability

Every playground request is logged just like a production request. After sending a message:

1. Open /[organization]/observability in another tab
2. Filter by your playground key alias
3. Click into the most recent log row to see the full request/response, token counts, latency breakdown, and cost

This is the fastest way to confirm guardrails fired, that a prompt template was applied, or that an A/B test routed traffic correctly.

When to use the Playground vs. the public playground

Both call the same API. The dashboard version inherits your org's configuration; the public version is org-agnostic until you paste a key.

Errors you'll see

Next Steps

• Quick Start — Make the same call from your code
• Authentication — How virtual keys work
• Chat Completions — Full API reference for the endpoint the Playground calls
• Budget Controls — Cap playground spend with a per-key budget