Respan ships open-source Rust AI gateway after LiteLLM breakdown

Respan released an open-source AI gateway written in Rust, replacing over 100,000 lines of wrapper code built around LiteLLM with a small core and plugins for model providers, routing, MCP tools, realtime voice and security. The breaking point was a January 2026 LiteLLM upgrade that caused intermittent connection failures whose cause was never found. The gateway is pre-alpha, and custom plugins must be compiled into the binary.

• Respan spent two years building over 100,000 lines of code around LiteLLM
• A January 2026 LiteLLM upgrade caused failures that were never diagnosed
• The Mistral provider plugin takes just 22 lines of code
• The gateway is pre-alpha; custom plugins are compiled into the binary