Most tools expect an HTTP-compatible Anthropic or OpenAI endpoint, but Anthropic's Claude Max is primarily accessible via the Claude Code SDK. Meridian's core insight is simple: translate the SDK's programmatic access into the standard HTTP protocols editors and agents already speak, without bypassing Anthropic's authentication or usage controls. That makes Claude available to UIs and CLIs that otherwise only speak Anthropic or OpenAI APIs.
What Sets It Apart
- Protocol translation with fidelity: Meridian uses the official Claude Code SDK for every request and converts responses into Anthropic/OpenAI formats — no credential interception, binary patches, or undocumented hacks. This preserves Anthropic-side caching, compaction, rate-limiting, and billing behavior.
- Session & profile ergonomics: built-in conversation session management (LRU + on-disk persistence), multi-profile OAuth handling, automatic token refresh, and a telemetry dashboard let you run long-lived interactive workflows across accounts and restarts.
- Interoperability first: provides both Anthropic Messages and OpenAI /v1/chat/completions endpoints, plus adapters for many client tools (OpenCode, Crush, Droid, Cline, Aider, Pi). Streaming, subagent concurrency, and tool passthrough are supported so existing tools can adopt Claude with minimal changes.
Who It's For and Trade-offs
Great fit if you run a Claude Max subscription and want to connect your preferred editor/agent or CI tools to Claude without changing frontends. It’s also useful for teams needing multi-profile routing or session persistence across restarts. Look elsewhere if you need an alternative that bypasses provider controls (Meridian explicitly does not) or if you require an upstream-hosted API key–style deployment — Meridian is designed as a local proxy tied to the Claude Code SDK and user OAuth sessions.
Where It Fits
Use Meridian when you need to integrate Claude into tools that accept an Anthropic/OpenAI base URL or when you want richer local session semantics than simple stateless API calls. It sits between client UIs and Anthropic's SDK, translating formats and managing session state while leaving authentication, billing, and token management to Anthropic.
