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Using PlanExe with OpenRouter

For new users, OpenRouter is the recommended starting point. When you have have generated a few plans via OpenRouter, then you can try switch to other AI providers.

OpenRouter provides access to a large number of LLM models, that runs in the cloud.

Unfortunately there is no free model that works reliable with PlanExe.

In my experience, the paid models are the most reliable. Models like google/gemini-2.0-flash-001. and openai/gpt-4o-mini are cheap and faster than running models on my own computer and without risk of it overheating.

I haven't been able to find a free model on OpenRouter that works well with PlanExe.

Avoid pricey paid models. PlanExe does more than 100 LLM inference calls per plan, so each run uses many tokens. With a cheap model, creating a full plan costs less than 0.30 USD; with one of the newest models, the price can exceed 20 USD. To keep PlanExe affordable for as many users as possible, the defaults use older, cheaper models.

Quickstart (Docker)

  1. Install Docker (with Docker Compose) — no local Python or pip is needed now.
  2. Clone the repo and enter it: 
    git clone https://github.com/PlanExeOrg/PlanExe.git
cd PlanExe
  3. Copy .env.docker-example to .env, then set your API key and pick a default OpenRouter profile so the worker uses the cloud model by default: 
    OPENROUTER_API_KEY='sk-or-v1-...'
DEFAULT_LLM='openrouter-paid-gemini-2.0-flash-001'   # or openrouter-paid-openai-gpt-4o-mini
    The containers mount .env and llm_config.json automatically.
  4. Start PlanExe: 
    docker compose up worker_plan frontend_single_user
  5. Wait for http://localhost:7860 to come up, submit a prompt, and watch progress with docker compose logs -f worker_plan.
  6. Outputs are written to run/<timestamped-output-dir> on the host (mounted from the containers).
  7. Stop with Ctrl+C (or docker compose down). If you change llm_config.json, restart the containers so they reload it: docker compose restart worker_plan frontend_single_user (or docker compose down && docker compose up). No rebuild is needed for config-only edits.

Configuration

Visit OpenRouter, create an account, purchase 5 USD in credits (plenty for making a several plans), and generate an API key.

Copy .env.docker-example to a new file called .env (loaded by Docker at startup).

Open the .env file in a text editor and insert your OpenRouter API key. Like this:

OPENROUTER_API_KEY='INSERT YOUR KEY HERE'

If you edit llm_config.json later, restart the worker/frontend containers to pick up the changes: docker compose restart worker_plan frontend_single_user (or stop/start). Rebuilds are only needed when dependencies change.

Troubleshooting

Inside PlanExe, when clicking Submit, a new Output Dir should be created containing a log.txt. Open that file and scroll to the bottom, see if there are any error messages about what is wrong.

When running in Docker, also check the worker logs for 401/429 or connectivity errors:

docker compose logs -f worker_plan

Report your issue on Discord. Please include info about your system, such as: "I'm on macOS with M1 Max with 64 GB.".

How to add a new OpenRouter model to llm_config.json

The OpenRouter/rankings page shows an overview of the most popular models. New models are added frequently

For a model to work with PlanExe, it must meet the following criteria:

  • Minimum 8192 output tokens.
  • Support structured output.
  • Reliable. Avoid fragile setups where it works one day, but not the next day. If it's a beta version, be aware that it may stop working.
  • Low latency.

Steps to add a model:

  1. Copy the model id from the openrouter website.
  2. Paste the model id into the llm_config.json.
  3. Restart PlanExe to apply the changes.

Next steps