Thesis on a Shoestring
A macOS desktop app for PhD students and postdocs that wraps AI research assistants (Claude Science, chat tools, code helpers) behind one model router, sending every literature search, summarization, or coding task to the cheapest capable provider with a real-time per-task cost ledger.
PhD students and academic researchers on tight grant budgets
- One-click model routing per task type (reasoning, writing, code, lit review)
- Real-time cost tracker with $/chapter and $/paper breakdowns
- Saved research presets that pin a model + prompt style per workflow
- Local SQLite log of every prompt, model, and cost for grant reporting
GitHub trending (176 stars) and active forks show academics are urgently looking for ways to keep using AI research tools without paying $20+/month per premium seat, right as Anthropic has raised top-model prices making third-party routing especially attractive.
CLIProxyAPI (very similar menu-bar router for Claude/GPT/Gemini) has 39.2k stars and 6.5k forks — far above the 176 cited — and multiple guides (MindStudio, ofox.ai) show researchers actively swapping Claude Code backends for DeepSeek at 2-5% of cost.GitHub - router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI ↗How to Use OpenRouter with Claude Code: Run Cheaper Models as a Backend ↗
The routing+cost-ledger niche is already crowded: CLIProxyAPI, NadirClaw, OpenRouter, plus research-specific tools (PapersFlow, Paperguide, Elicit, OpenAI Prism, NotebookLM) all compete for the same PhD wallet with overlapping features.GitHub - NadirRouter/NadirClaw ↗The PhD Student's Complete Guide to AI Research Tools in 2026 ↗
Target users are explicitly budget-constrained grad students/postdocs; OpenRouter already offers the same route-to-cheapest capability for a 5.5% fee, and CLIProxyAPI provides the equivalent open-source MIT-licensed solution for free, leaving little willingness to pay.OpenRouter Pricing 2026: Complete Model Cost Guide & Hidden Markup Breakdown ↗GitHub - router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI ↗
Model pricing churn (Anthropic price hikes vs. persistent DeepSeek/Chinese-model undercutting) creates a durable structural need, but the routing layer is rapidly commoditized and academic tool preferences shift fast.OpenRouter Pricing 2026: Complete Model Cost Guide & Hidden Markup Breakdown ↗
CLIProxyAPI already proves the architecture (macOS menu-bar app wrapping OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini into a unified endpoint with quota tracking) is buildable by a small team; academic-specific UI is incremental work.GitHub - router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI ↗