Glossary

Active. An organization whose savings are switched on. Compare pass-through.

Application. A name for the traffic one of your systems sends. Requests are attributed to the application of the service key they use.

Auto mode. Routing a model: "auto" request to the cheapest model strong enough for it.

Batch tier. A provider’s discounted, slower API for requests that can wait.

BYOK (bring your own key). ACOG calls providers only with your organization’s own accounts and credentials.

Channel. The platform a connection uses: direct, bedrock, vertex, azure or custom.

Compatible endpoints. /v1/chat/completions, /v1/messages, /v1/embeddings, /v1/models and /responses: the OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API, which works with any connected model.

Connection. Credentials and settings for one platform and model family in your organization.

Declared model. A model a connection says it serves. Requests are routed by declared model.

Default connection, default model. The connection that serves auto (with auto mode off) and the models it declares; the model it uses for auto.

Disposition. How a request was served: exact cache, semantic cache, dedup, optimized, batch or pass-through.

Gainshare. On the hosted service, the share of measured savings you pay.

Gateway key. An acog_… key that authenticates requests to the gateway and the management API.

Install identity. On a self-hosted installation, a keyless connection that uses the identity the installation already runs as.

Issuer. The OpenID Connect identity ACOG runs for each organization, which your Google Cloud project or Anthropic organization trusts for keyless connections.

Keyless connection. A Vertex AI or Anthropic connection that stores no credential and authenticates with workload identity federation.

Native routes. /anthropic, /openai, /vertex, /bedrock, /azure and /custom: each provider’s own API, forwarded without translation.

Pass-through. An organization whose requests are forwarded unchanged at full price, with no savings and no charge.

Provider prompt caching. A provider billing repeated prompt prefixes at a lower rate. ACOG adds the markers that turn it on.

Response cache. Answering an identical request from a stored response.

Semantic cache. Answering a near-identical prompt from a stored answer, above a similarity threshold.

Service key. A gateway key for an application rather than a person.

Translation. Converting a request and its response between the OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini APIs.

Wire shape. The API format of a request or response: OpenAI Chat Completions, Anthropic Messages or Gemini.

Workload identity federation. Trusting an external identity’s short-lived tokens instead of a stored key. Google Cloud and Anthropic both support it.