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SFAI / PRACTICAL GUIDE

Model developer, inference provider and API channel

Understand who builds a model, who runs it, and where you access it.

Separate the three roles

The developer publishes or maintains the model. The inference provider serves requests on infrastructure. The API channel is the service through which you access an offer. A channel may route a request among multiple inference hosts, so a channel-level price is not necessarily a pinned-host quote.

Read exchange tags

The exchange uses @developer for a developer, $model for a model and :channel.provider to identify an offer when a host is known. These tags distinguish a model’s identity from its route to inference. Automatic routing remains explicitly labeled rather than being presented as a guaranteed host.

Compare the service as well as the model

Check supported parameters, region, retention, context, quantization, tier and source-reported performance. Two offers for a similarly named model can differ operationally. Medusa links reuse existing model integrations; they do not by themselves guarantee a particular inference host.

Apply the method to current data

Browse current source-qualified model profiles · Review sources and publication limits