Cohere provides OpenAI-compatible inference through its Compatibility API. Apus provides Cohere as an official external plugin.

Property Value
Provider id cohere
Plugin @openclaw/cohere-provider
Auth env var COHERE_API_KEY
Onboarding flag --auth-choice cohere-api-key
Direct CLI flag --cohere-api-key <key>
API OpenAI-compatible (openai-completions)
Base URL https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1
Default model cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026
Context window 128,000 tokens

Built-in catalog

Model ref Visibility Input Context Max output Notes
cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026 visible text, image 128,000 64,000 Default; flagship agentic and reasoning model
cohere/command-a-03-2025 hidden text 256,000 8,000 Previous generation; replaced by Command A+
cohere/command-a-reasoning-08-2025 hidden text 256,000 32,000 Previous generation; replaced by Command A+
cohere/command-a-vision-07-2025 hidden text, image 128,000 8,000 Previous generation; replaced by Command A+
cohere/north-mini-code-1-0 visible text, image 256,000 64,000 Agentic coding; reasoning; free limits

Reasoning-capable Cohere models support two Compatibility API reasoning modes. Apus maps off to none and every enabled thinking level to high. Command A Vision does not support tool use, so Apus keeps agent tools disabled for that model.

Get started

  1. Install the official plugin:
apus plugins install @openclaw/cohere-provider

Installation applies to a running Gateway automatically; otherwise it takes effect on the next startup. See Apply changes and inspect.

  1. Create a Cohere API key.
  2. Run onboarding:
apus onboard --non-interactive --accept-risk --skip-health \
  --auth-choice cohere-api-key \
  --cohere-api-key "$COHERE_API_KEY"
  1. Confirm the catalog is available:
apus models list --provider cohere

Onboarding only sets Cohere as the primary model when no primary model is already configured.

Onboarding preserves your model entries and leaves generated catalog rows to discovery. With models.mode: "replace", it also writes the built-in catalog because that mode skips discovery.

Environment-only setup

Make COHERE_API_KEY available to the Gateway process, then select the Cohere model:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026" },
    },
  },
}

If the Gateway runs as a daemon or in Docker, set COHERE_API_KEY for that service. Exporting it only in an interactive shell does not make it available to an already-running Gateway.

Related