Auto Routing for Creatives: When Pantr Picks Flux, Nano Banana, or Seedream

OpenRouter routes models for developers: pick by cost, latency, fallback. Creatives need a dumber, better version: read the brief and the board, then pick a lens. That is Pantr Auto — Image and Video as the first row in each picker group.

Auto is not magic and it never overrides a model you already chose. It is a default for people who should not have to memorize Flux vs Nano Banana vs GPT Image. The category idea: OpenRouter for creatives.

Image Auto

Image Auto looks at the prompt and how many references would be sent:

• Plain text-to-image → Flux.2 Pro
• A selected image to edit → Nano Banana 2
• Photoreal stills → Flux.2 Pro
• Illustration / anime → Seedream 4.5
• Text / logo / layout → Nano Banana
• More than 8 refs → a high-ref model (Nano Banana 2 / Pro, Seedream, or GPT Image 2)

If the chosen model cannot take that many refs, generation is blocked with a clear cap. Auto will not drop images on the floor.

Video Auto

• One selected image → first-frame (Seedance Mini, or Veo if the prompt is cinematic)
• No selection → text-to-video (Sora 2 Pro)

Details and face-filter caveats: OpenRouter for video.

When to turn Auto off

The moment you are A/B testing. Auto is a start, not a score. Change model is the test. If you already know the frame is a poster, pick GPT Image. If you already know it is a lookbook, pick Flux. Auto is for the empty bar at 9am.

Defaults persist in local storage. Image default is Auto image. You can always pick a named row; Auto will leave it alone until you put Auto back.

This is routing for people who think in pictures. It will be wrong sometimes. That is fine — switching is cheap when the board still holds the last try. Keep context. Start at €1.00 and let Auto take the first still. Then argue with it.