475Cumulus

Service

LLM middleware built into your backend

A controlled server-side layer every AI request passes through — identity, policy, provider routing, logging, and cost controls before any model call.

Who this is for

Engineering teams that have shipped an AI demo or POC and need a production boundary before expanding features — especially multi-tenant SaaS with compliance, cost, or provider failover requirements.

Problems we solve

Common failure modes when copilot, retrieval, or middleware features are bolted on without an integration plan.

  • API keys and model calls exposed from the frontend — no central place to enforce policy or cut off abuse
  • Each feature team reinvents auth checks, rate limits, and logging in slightly incompatible ways
  • No visibility into token spend per tenant, per feature, or per workflow when finance or product asks what AI costs

Typical deliverables

  • Middleware service or module in your repo — API routes, microservice, or shared library behind your existing session or JWT auth
  • Provider abstraction with routing, streaming, caching, and failover across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or self-hosted endpoints
  • Structured logging and seed eval hooks, and dashboards for latency, error rate, and tokens per successful user action
  • Runbooks for on-call — kill switches, provider outage fallbacks, and prompt rollback without redeploying the whole app

How we deliver

Your eng team stays on the roadmap. We handle the AI integration layer — scoped sprints, PRs to your repo, and handoff docs so your team can operate what we ship.

Middleware is usually the first integration boundary we recommend: every later feature — RAG, copilots, agents — shares the same auth, logging, and cost envelope. We map your current architecture in the audit phase, ship a working proxy against your real stack, then expand to the first workflow-bound feature behind feature flags.

  1. Step 1

    Technical audit

    Map your architecture, API boundaries, data flows, and auth model. Identify the lowest-risk, highest-value integration point.

  2. Step 2

    Architecture & prototype

    API contracts, middleware design, and a working proof against your real stack — validated before full build commitment.

  3. Step 3

    Build & deploy

    Production code in your repo. Staging, load testing, and canary rollout behind feature flags — with runbooks for your team.

  4. Step 4

    Operate & expand

    Monitor latency, cost, and output quality. Iterate on evals and prompts, then extend to the next workflow boundary.

Common questions

Is this the same as Next.js middleware?
No. We mean an LLM middleware service in your backend — an API route or module that owns model calls. It is unrelated to edge routing middleware, though many Next.js apps implement it as an API route under app/api/.
Can we keep our current model provider?
Yes. We design a provider abstraction in your codebase so you can route to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or self-hosted models — and swap or split traffic later for cost, compliance, or failover without rewriting product features.
What does production-ready middleware include beyond the proxy?
Auth enforcement before any model call, per-tenant rate limits and budgets, structured tracing tied to your existing observability stack, eval baselines for prompt changes, and defined failure behavior when a provider is slow or unavailable.

Scope an integration for your stack

Describe the feature you are planning — we will map architecture, effort, rollout strategy, and what production-ready means for your system.

Get an integration plan