Request jurisdiction and provider selection

A provider name alone does not identify the country where a request ran, the applicable law or the approval record.

A router that cannot classify a request cannot limit where it lands. Residency is then audited after routing.

Classification comes before model choice. Before price or latency enters the picture, a request carries a jurisdiction, declared at the key, workspace, or individual call. That declaration removes ineligible providers. Price and quality then rank what remains.

A gateway that optimises first and filters later can choose the cheapest global endpoint, notice the jurisdiction constraint, then retry. That retry crosses a border because of the sequence of operations, even when nobody intended a transfer.

When no eligible provider serves a model in the required jurisdiction, the request returns a specific error naming the constraint. The provider pool is not widened.