Providers

Pi supports subscription-based providers via OAuth and API key providers via environment variables or auth file. Built-in catalogs ship with pi; configured providers may refresh newer catalogs and cache them in ~/.pi/agent/models-store.json for offline use.

Table of Contents

• Subscriptions
• API Keys
• Auth File
• Cloud Providers
• Custom Providers
• Resolution Order

Subscriptions

Use /login in interactive mode, then select a provider:

• ChatGPT Plus/Pro (Codex)
• Claude Pro/Max
• GitHub Copilot
• xAI (Grok/X subscription)
• Radius

Use /logout to clear credentials. Tokens are stored in ~/.pi/agent/auth.json and auto-refresh when expired.

OpenAI Codex

• Requires ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription
• Officially endorsed by OpenAI: Codex for OSS

Claude Pro/Max

Anthropic subscription auth is active for Claude Pro/Max accounts. Third-party harness usage draws from extra usage and is billed per token, not against Claude plan limits.

GitHub Copilot

• Press Enter for github.com, or enter your GitHub Enterprise Server domain
• If you get "model not supported", enable it in VS Code: Copilot Chat → model selector → select model → "Enable"

xAI (Grok/X subscription)

• Run /login xai, then select Use a subscription
• XAI_API_KEY remains available through Use an API key

Radius

Radius is a dynamic pi-messages gateway. /login radius stores OAuth tokens in auth.json; the gateway catalog is refreshed independently and cached in models-store.json. Custom Radius gateways can be declared in models.json with "oauth": "radius" and a gateway baseUrl.

API Keys

Environment Variables or Auth File

Use /login in interactive mode and select a provider to store an API key in auth.json, or set credentials via environment variable:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
pi

Reference for environment variables and auth.json keys: const envMap in packages/ai/src/env-api-keys.ts.

Auth File

Store credentials in ~/.pi/agent/auth.json:

{
  "anthropic": { "type": "api_key", "key": "sk-ant-..." },
  "ant-ling": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "openai": { "type": "api_key", "key": "sk-..." },
  "deepseek": { "type": "api_key", "key": "sk-..." },
  "nvidia": { "type": "api_key", "key": "nvapi-..." },
  "google": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "opencode": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "opencode-go": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "together": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "xiaomi": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "xiaomi-token-plan-cn":  { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "xiaomi-token-plan-ams": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." },
  "xiaomi-token-plan-sgp": { "type": "api_key", "key": "..." }
}

The file is created with 0600 permissions (user read/write only). Auth file credentials take priority over environment variables.

API key credentials can also include provider-scoped environment values. These values are used before process environment variables when resolving the credential key, provider/model headers, and provider configuration such as Cloudflare account IDs, Azure OpenAI settings, Vertex project/location, Bedrock settings, PI_CACHE_RETENTION, and HTTP_PROXY/HTTPS_PROXY.

{
  "cloudflare-ai-gateway": {
    "type": "api_key",
    "key": "$CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY",
    "env": {
      "CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY": "...",
      "CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID": "account-id",
      "CLOUDFLARE_GATEWAY_ID": "gateway-id"
    }
  }
}

Use this when pi should use different provider settings than the project shell environment.

Key Resolution

The key field supports command execution, environment interpolation, and literals:

• Shell command: "!command" at the start executes the whole value as a command and uses stdout (cached for process lifetime)
  jsonCopy

  { "type": "api_key", "key": "!security find-generic-password -ws 'anthropic'" }
  { "type": "api_key", "key": "!op read 'op://vault/item/credential'" }
  

• Environment interpolation: "$ENV_VAR" or "${ENV_VAR}" uses the value of the named variable. Interpolation works inside larger literals.
  jsonCopy

  { "type": "api_key", "key": "$MY_ANTHROPIC_KEY" }
  { "type": "api_key", "key": "${KEY_PREFIX}_${KEY_SUFFIX}" }
  

  $FOO_BAR is the variable FOO_BAR; use ${FOO}_BAR when BAR is literal text. Missing environment variables make the value unresolved.
• Escapes: "$$" emits a literal "$"; "$!" emits a literal "!" without triggering command execution.
  jsonCopy

  { "type": "api_key", "key": "$$literal-dollar-prefix" }
  { "type": "api_key", "key": "$!literal-bang-prefix" }
  

• Literal value: Used directly. Plain uppercase strings such as MY_API_KEY are literals; use $MY_API_KEY for environment variables.
  jsonCopy

  { "type": "api_key", "key": "sk-ant-..." }
  { "type": "api_key", "key": "public" }
  

OAuth credentials are also stored here after /login and managed automatically.

Cloud Providers

Azure OpenAI

export AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=...
export AZURE_OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://your-resource.ai.azure.com
# also supported: https://your-resource.cognitiveservices.azure.com
# also supported: https://your-resource.openai.azure.com
# root endpoints are auto-normalized to /openai/v1
# or use resource name instead of base URL
export AZURE_OPENAI_RESOURCE_NAME=your-resource

# Optional
export AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION=2024-02-01
export AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME_MAP=gpt-4=my-gpt4,gpt-4o=my-gpt4o

Amazon Bedrock

Use /login amazon-bedrock to store a Bedrock API key, or configure one of the ambient AWS credential sources below:

# Option 1: AWS Profile
export AWS_PROFILE=your-profile

# Option 2: IAM Keys
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIA...
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

# Option 3: Bearer Token
export AWS_BEARER_TOKEN_BEDROCK=...

# Optional region (defaults to us-east-1)
export AWS_REGION=us-west-2

Also supports ECS task roles (AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_*) and IRSA (AWS_WEB_IDENTITY_TOKEN_FILE).

pi --provider amazon-bedrock --model us.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-20250514-v1:0

Prompt caching is enabled automatically for Claude models whose ID contains a recognizable model name (base models and system-defined inference profiles). For application inference profiles (whose ARNs don't contain the model name), set AWS_BEDROCK_FORCE_CACHE=1 to enable cache points:

export AWS_BEDROCK_FORCE_CACHE=1
pi --provider amazon-bedrock --model arn:aws:bedrock:us-east-1:123456789012:application-inference-profile/abc123

If you are connecting to a Bedrock API proxy, the following environment variables can be used:

# Set the URL for the Bedrock proxy (standard AWS SDK env var)
export AWS_ENDPOINT_URL_BEDROCK_RUNTIME=https://my.corp.proxy/bedrock

# Set if your proxy does not require authentication
export AWS_BEDROCK_SKIP_AUTH=1

# Set if your proxy only supports HTTP/1.1
export AWS_BEDROCK_FORCE_HTTP1=1

Cloudflare AI Gateway

CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY can be set via /login. The account ID and gateway slug can be set as environment variables or in the API key credential's env object in auth.json.

export CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=...           # or use /login
export CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID=...
export CLOUDFLARE_GATEWAY_ID=...        # create at dash.cloudflare.com → AI → AI Gateway
pi --provider cloudflare-ai-gateway --model "claude-sonnet-4-5"

Routes to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Workers AI through Cloudflare AI Gateway. Workers AI uses the Unified API (/compat) and prefixed model IDs (workers-ai/@cf/...). OpenAI uses the OpenAI passthrough route (/openai) with native OpenAI model IDs such as gpt-5.1. Anthropic uses the Anthropic passthrough route (/anthropic) with native Anthropic model IDs such as claude-sonnet-4-5.

AI Gateway authentication uses CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY as cf-aig-authorization. Upstream authentication can be one of:

For normal pi usage, prefer unified billing or stored BYOK. Inline BYOK requires configuring an additional upstream Authorization header for the Cloudflare AI Gateway provider, for example via a models.json provider/model override.

Cloudflare Workers AI

CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY can be set via /login. CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID can be set as an environment variable or in the API key credential's env object in auth.json.

export CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=...           # or use /login
export CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID=...
pi --provider cloudflare-workers-ai --model "@cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6"

Pi automatically sets x-session-affinity for prefix caching discounts.

Google Vertex AI

Uses Application Default Credentials:

gcloud auth application-default login
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=your-project
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION=us-central1

Or set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to a service account key file.

Custom Providers

Via models.json: Add Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, or any provider that speaks a supported API (OpenAI Completions, OpenAI Responses, Anthropic Messages, Google Generative AI). See models.md.

Via extensions: For providers that need custom API implementations or OAuth flows, create an extension. See custom-provider.md and examples/extensions/custom-provider-gitlab-duo.

Resolution Order

When resolving credentials for a provider:

1. CLI --api-key flag
2. auth.json entry (API key or OAuth token)
3. Environment variable
4. Custom provider keys from models.json