Design for Provider Independence

Your AI infrastructure should survive any single provider going away.

The principle

Models are interchangeable. Your prompts, context, workflows, and memory system are the real assets. Build so the model is the easiest part to replace.

In practice

• Treat models as pluggable components. Config changes, not code rewrites.
• Write model-agnostic prompts. Clear instructions work everywhere. Exploiting one model’s quirks creates a dependency.
• Keep a migration checklist ready. Not if, when. Know where every provider-specific reference lives.
• Test failover before you need it. Add a second provider. Verify it works. You don’t have to use it daily.
• Separate context from model. Memory files, personality docs, tool configs: all portable. If they’re stored in provider-agnostic formats, migration is just pointing a new model at the same context.

The test

Could you switch your primary model in under 4 hours? If not, you have hidden dependencies. Find them before the email arrives telling you the clock is ticking.