AI Gateways: Worth the Middleware Tax?

AI gateways promise more than just model routing—PII reduction, context augmentation, and system prompt injection at a single chokepoint. But every middleware layer adds latency, debugging complexity, and maintenance burden. We examine when these features justify the overhead and when simpler solutions like cloud credential managers or direct API calls make more sense. A practical look at the self-hosted gateway landscape and the real costs of centralized AI infrastructure. Episode #071960 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/071960