Why targets exist
In passthrough routing, every call carries its own upstream provider key. That works on a developer’s machine, but it gets awkward across a shared project — staging, CI, or production — where one team manages provider relationships and budgets. Targets move credential ownership to the project. You store provider credentials once under Project → AI Gateway → Credentials, then build routing rules whose targets reference those credentials. Calls to models covered by a managed route no longer need to carry a provider key; to11 supplies the stored one. Models that no route covers continue to work as passthrough.What a target carries
A target is two choices:- A model — the upstream model the target sends to. It must be a model one of your connected providers exposes (see Models).
- A credential — the stored provider credential to11 uses for that model.
Targets and routing strategies
You define a rule’s targets when you build a route in the dashboard’s AI Gateway → Routing section. How many targets a route has goes together with its strategy:- One target uses Direct routing — every matching request goes to that single model-and-credential pairing.
- More than one target uses a strategy that chooses between them: Weighted split (proportional to each target’s weight) or Fallback chain (tried in order).
Where targets sit
Targets sit between providers and routes:- Providers (L1) define where an API lives and which models it serves.
- Targets bind a model to a specific stored credential, and optionally a weight.
- Routes (L2) group targets under a strategy and match them to a model name.
Next steps
Routes
How routes map model names to strategies across targets.
Providers
Connecting a provider and storing its credential.
Routing overview
How passthrough and managed routing fit together.