https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router

You really notice though that Claude 4 was trained within the harness of CC but other models with strong instructions following do decent too.

I tested gemini, gpt4.1, kimi k2 and I liked 4.1 best actually but ymmv.

I just hit CC limits twice in a row, so decided to finally try out CCR with Gemini 2.5 Pro and Qwen coder. So far, it has been a disaster. Did anyone have any real success with it so far? Any tips you can share?

TL;DR: I wired up claude-code with claude-code-router (ccr) and vLLM running Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct. Chat works, but inside Claude Code it never executes anything (no tool calls), so it just says “Let me check files…” and stalls. Anyone got this combo working?

Setup

Host: Linux
Serving model (vLLM):

python -m vllm.entrypoints.openai.api_server \
  --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 \
  --model Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct \
  --dtype bfloat16 --enforce-eager \
  --gpu-memory-utilization 0.95 \
  --api-key sk-sksksksk \
  --max-model-len 180000 \
  --enable-auto-tool-choice \
  --tool-call-parser hermes \
  --tensor_parallel_size 2

I can hit this endpoint directly and get normal chat responses without issues.

claude-code-router config.json**:**

jsonCopyEdit{
  "LOG": true,
  "CLAUDE_PATH": "",
  "HOST": "127.0.0.1",
  "PORT": 3456,
  "APIKEY": "",
  "API_TIMEOUT_MS": "600000",
  "PROXY_URL": "",
  "transformers": [],
  "Providers": [
    {
      "name": "runpod",
      "api_base_url": "https://myhost/v1/chat/completions",
      "api_key": "sk-sksksksksk",
      "models": ["Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct"]
    }
  ],
  "Router": {
    "default": "runpod,Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct",
    "background": "",
    "think": "",
    "longContext": "",
    "longContextThreshold": 60000,
    "webSearch": ""
  }
}

Client: ccr code

On launch, Claude Code connects to http://127.0.0.1:3456, starts fine, runs /init, and says:

…but then it never actually runs anything (no bash/dir/tool calls happen).

What works vs. what doesn’t

• ✅ Direct requests to vLLM chat/completions return normal assistant messages.

• ✅ Claude Code UI starts up, reads the repo, and “thinks”.

• ❌ It never triggers any tool calls (no file ops, no bash, no git, no nothing), so it just stalls at the “checking files” step.

Things I’ve tried

• Drop the Hermes parser: remove --enable-auto-tool-choice and --tool-call-parser hermes from vLLM so we only use OpenAI tool calling. But it won't answer any request and throws an error.

Questions:

1. Has anyone run Claude Code → ccr → vLLM successfully with Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B? If yes, what exact vLLM flags (especially around tool calling) and chat template did you use?

2. Should I avoid --tool-call-parser hermes with Qwen? Is there a known parser that works better with Qwen3 for OpenAI tools?

3. ccr tips: Any ccr flags/env to force tool_choice or to log the raw upstream responses so I can confirm whether tool_calls are present/missing?

Logs / snippet

From Claude Code:

shellCopyEdit... Welcome to Claude Code ...
> /init is analyzing your codebase…
> ok
> Let me first check what files and directories we have...
# (stalls here; no tool execution happens)

If you’ve got this stack working, I’d love to see your vLLM command, ccr config, and (ideally) a single tool-call response as proof-of-life. Thanks!

Which model has the best tool calling with Claude code router?

Been experimenting with claude code router seen seen here: https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router

I got Kimi-K2 to work with Groq, but the tool calling seems to cause issues.

Is anyone else having luck with Kimi-k2 or any other models for claude code router (which is of course quite reliant on tool calling). Ive tried trouble shooting it quite abit but wondering if this is a config issue.