# Model routing depends on explicit business logic

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/model-routing-depends-on-explicit-business-logic/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Angela McNeal](https://realalpha.app/builders/angela-mcneal/) · Angela McNeal is CEO and cofounder of Thread AI. · Built Lemma, Thread AI’s orchestration platform for governed AI workflows and agents in mission-critical enterprise operations.
- Host: [Theo Jaffee](https://realalpha.app/people/theo-jaffee/) · Co-founder & host, MTS · One of the first members of a16z's new media team; earlier hosted the Emergent Ventures-backed Theo Jaffee Podcast.
- Host: [Sophia Dew](https://realalpha.app/people/sophia-dew/) · Host, MTS
- Show: MTS
- Episode: [Why Full AI Automation Fails in Production | Angela McNea](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/), Nov 8, 2026
- Moment: 7:13 to 9:45 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/model-routing-depends-on-explicit-business-logic/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=433

## Quote

> “the actual hard part, the technology behind a router I don't think is as interesting as like **the application**”
> — [Angela McNeal](https://realalpha.app/builders/angela-mcneal/) at [8:18](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=498) · MTS

## Takeaways

1. A router's value depends on the rules around it.
2. Define what counts as a hard problem before routing.
3. Decide whether cost means money, time, or both.

## About this segment

Angela McNeal says the hard part of routing models is defining what the business wants to optimize. That logic must be set before a router can make useful choices.

From “Why Full AI Automation Fails in Production | Angela McNea”, Nov 8, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[7:18](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=438) So I'm very curious about what inspired you to write Every Good Decision is an ensemble because we see now, we talk a lot about model routing and how it's very important to have something that can choose what level of model based off of some sort of cost trade-off. And then you zoom out and make the argument that everything has always been this sort of ensemble and not just, like, one model or entity making decisions.

[7:45](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=465) It's, like, whether it's, like, how the judicial system works or whatnot. So, yeah, so I'm curious, how does that connect to Thread AI? Yeah, so we were, again, I was seeing this explosion. conversation around routing, and there are real important conversations to be had, and we're seeing it with our enterprise customers of like, when is it too expensive to use this kind of model, or the latency is too high, or there are like real trade-offs around the specific nodes. And the interesting part to me is that like the actual hard part, the technology behind a router I don't think is as interesting as like the application the hard part is the application around it how the business person or the engineering teams decide what is the logic of who what models do we pick what like what are the things that we're trying to optimize

[8:45](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=525) and then you have to pre-define all of the decisions up front saying like okay well we've decided that this is what a hard problem is. This is the shape of a hard problem is. We've decided what is expensive? How do you define expensive? Is it expensive in time, in people's time, in money? So you have to predefine all of these business and esoteric and abstract things ahead of time before you even get to, cool, now we just need something to help me route between these systems. And so we built our platform so you can build these kinds of routers natively in our product, but we spent a lot of time on those decision gates explicitly on those logic gates because we were seeing like in the real world, those were the actual barriers to putting something in production. Yeah, I see. I want to shout out our sponsor, Lovable. You know, the app you've

[9:39](https://realalpha.app/v/DwrYJCnoHZs/?t=579) been meaning to build, the internal tool, side project, or product you'd otherwise lose a