overthinkos/notebook-openrouter

notebook-openrouter -- OpenRouter API integration data layer

Layer Properties

| Property | Value | |----------|-------| | Dependencies | (none) | | Packages | (none) | | Services | (none) | | Volumes | workspace -> ~/workspace (from jupyter) | | Data | data/openrouter -> workspace volume, dest: openrouter | | env_requires | OPENROUTER_API_KEY — API key for OpenRouter LLM inference | | Install files | (none) |

How It Works

This is a data layer with an env_requires declaration — it uses the data: field to map notebooks to a volume, and env_requires: to declare that the OPENROUTER_API_KEY environment variable must be present:

info: "OpenRouter API integration notebook collection"

env_requires:
  - name: OPENROUTER_API_KEY
    description: "API key for OpenRouter LLM inference"

data:
  - src: data/openrouter
    volume: workspace
    dest: openrouter

At build time, the contents of data/openrouter/ are staged into /data/workspace/openrouter/ inside the image.

At deploy time, ov config copies the staged data into the workspace volume at <workspace>/openrouter/. The dest: openrouter field places the notebooks in a subdirectory rather than the volume root.

The env_requires declaration is stored as an OCI label (org.overthinkos.env_requires). At ov config time, if OPENROUTER_API_KEY is not present in the resolved environment, a warning is printed:

Warning: jupyter-ml-notebook requires OPENROUTER_API_KEY (API key for OpenRouter LLM inference) — not set

This is the first layer in the project to use the env_requires feature.

Included Notebooks

3 Jupyter notebooks covering OpenRouter API usage with the free model qwen/qwen3.6-plus:free:

| Notebook | Topic | Features | |----------|-------|----------| | 00_OpenRouter_Basics.ipynb | API Basics | Authentication, simple chat completion, multi-turn conversation, error handling, usage/cost tracking | | 01_OpenRouter_Models.ipynb | Model Selection | List all models, filter free models, inspect model details (pricing, context, modality), compare responses across models | | 02_OpenRouter_Inference.ipynb | Practical Inference | Structured JSON output, text summarization, code generation (with exec), reasoning with thinking tokens, translation pipeline |

Manifest: notebooks.yaml — structured catalog with title, description, and ordering.

Free Tier Rate Limit Gotcha

The free model qwen/qwen3.6-plus:free has strict rate limits (~1 request per minute). All notebooks include an openrouter_chat() / chat() retry helper that handles 429 responses with exponential backoff:

def openrouter_chat(model, messages, retries=5, delay=15):
    for attempt in range(retries):
        response = requests.post(...)
        if response.status_code == 429:
            wait = delay * (attempt + 1)
            print(f"Rate limited, waiting {wait}s...")
            time.sleep(wait)
            continue
        response.raise_for_status()
        return response.json()

The retry helper also handles transient 502 upstream errors from Alibaba (the Qwen provider) where the response is 200 but missing the choices key.

Providing the API Key

The OPENROUTER_API_KEY must be injected into the container environment:

# Via ov config (persisted in quadlet)
ov config jupyter-ml-notebook -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-...

# Via workspace .env file
echo "OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-..." >> ~/project/.env

# Via direnv .secrets (GPG-encrypted)
ov secrets gpg set OPENROUTER_API_KEY sk-or-v1-...

Usage

# image.yml
jupyter-ml-notebook:
  layers:
    - jupyter-ml
    - notebook-templates
    - notebook-finetuning
    - notebook-ollama
    - notebook-llm-on-supercomputers
    - notebook-openrouter
    # ... other layers

# Deploy with API key
ov config jupyter-ml-notebook -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-...
ov start jupyter-ml-notebook
# Open http://localhost:8888 -> navigate to openrouter/

Used In Images

• /ov-jupyter:jupyter-ml-notebook

Related Skills

• /ov-build:layer — data field documentation, env_requires/env_accepts field documentation
• /ov-core:config — data provisioning and env_requires warning during ov config setup
• /ov-core:deploy — volume backing configuration
• /ov-jupyter:notebook-ollama — sibling data layer pattern (Ollama integration notebooks)
• /ov-jupyter:notebook-finetuning — sibling data layer pattern (Unsloth fine-tuning notebooks)
• /ov-jupyter:notebook-templates — sibling data layer pattern (starter notebooks)
• /ov-jupyter:notebook-llm-on-supercomputers — sibling data layer pattern (TU Wien course notebooks)
• /ov-jupyter:jupyter-ml-notebook — the image that includes this layer

When to Use This Skill

Use when the user asks about:

• The notebook-openrouter layer or its contents
• OpenRouter API tutorial notebooks or integration examples
• How to provide OPENROUTER_API_KEY to Jupyter containers
• The env_requires feature (this is the first real consumer)
• Free tier rate limits on qwen/qwen3.6-plus:free
• Structured output, reasoning with thinking tokens, or model comparison via OpenRouter

Related

• /ov-build:eval — declarative testing (eval: block, ov eval image, ov eval live)