GoKawiilYC-backed Respan launches open-source Rust AI gateway built entirely on plugins
Respan, a Y Combinator W24 startup, has released an open-source AI gateway written in Rust that treats every component—providers, protocols like MCP and voice, modalities, and features such as fallbacks and PII redaction—as a swappable plugin. The team says the design stems from running a LiteLLM-based gateway since 2024 whose wrapper code grew past 100,000 lines, culminating in a January upgrade that caused unresolved connection errors and forced them to stop upgrading LiteLLM directly.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
By minimizing the core to an event dispatcher modeled on Nginx, Respan is betting that a plugin architecture could let teams extend gateways without the fragility that comes from patching a monolithic dependency like LiteLLM. This approach may appeal to organizations running many AI providers with differing API keys, routing, and rate limits, though its long-term stability compared to established gateways remains unproven.
- Respan is a YC W24 startup offering an open-source Rust AI gateway
- Its architecture makes providers, protocols, and features all pluggable, inspired by Nginx's minimal-core design
- The project followed problems maintaining a 100,000-line wrapper around LiteLLM after a failed upgrade in January
Source: news.ycombinator.com, 2026-10-20
Published there as: “Launch HN: Respan (YC W24) – Open-source Rust AI gateway built around plugins”
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