guard again with direction: "output" after the model
(Node.js SDK).
Coverage
Ask —
status is advisory: nothing prompts anyone unless your code does.
A middleware has no user to prompt on the HTTP path either.
Use it when you want every new AI route covered by configuration rather than
by each developer’s discipline. Not as your only defence when traffic reaches
a model without an HTTP request — jobs, queues and internal calls bypass it.
Limits. In Next.js the middleware runs on the Edge runtime by default;
confirm your deployment target supports the SDK or move the check into the route
handler. Output coverage needs a second evaluation on the response.
Full comparison: Coverage.