Build a Cost-Aware AI Support Triage API using Serverless Inference via Inference Router

A step-by-step guide to building a cost-aware AI support triage API using DigitalOcean's Inference Router and FastAPI. Instead of hardcoding a single model for all tasks, the router dispatches each subtask (ticket classification, urgency scoring, customer reply drafting, escalation summarization) to the most appropriate model based on cost, latency, or quality policies. The tutorial walks through a baseline single-model implementation, then migrates to a router-based approach where no model names appear in application code. A cost analysis shows the router approach is 71% cheaper than running everything on Claude Opus while delivering better quality than a single cheap model for all tasks.