The Vercel AI Gateway provides a unified API to access hundreds of models through a single endpoint.

Property Value
Provider vercel-ai-gateway
Package @openclaw/vercel-ai-gateway-provider
Auth AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
API Anthropic Messages compatible
Base URL https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh
Model catalog Auto-discovered via /v1/models

Apus auto-discovers the Gateway /v1/models catalog, so both the /models vercel-ai-gateway chat command and apus models list --provider vercel-ai-gateway include current model refs such as vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5 and vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6.

Getting started

Install the plugin

```bash
apus plugins install @openclaw/vercel-ai-gateway-provider
```

Installation applies to a running Gateway automatically; otherwise it takes effect
on the next startup. See [Apply changes and inspect](/plugins/manage-plugins#apply-changes-and-inspect).

Set the API key

```bash
apus onboard --auth-choice ai-gateway-api-key
```

Set a default model

```json5
{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4.6" },
    },
  },
}
```

Verify the model is available

```bash
apus models list --provider vercel-ai-gateway
```

Non-interactive example

apus onboard --non-interactive --accept-risk --skip-health \
  --mode local \
  --auth-choice ai-gateway-api-key \
  --ai-gateway-api-key "$AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY"

Model ID shorthand

Apus normalizes Claude shorthand model refs at runtime:

Shorthand input Normalized model ref
vercel-ai-gateway/claude-opus-4.6 vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4.6
vercel-ai-gateway/opus-4.6 vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4-6

Use either form in your configuration; Apus resolves the canonical anthropic/... ref automatically.

Advanced configuration

Environment variable for daemon processes 
If the Apus Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure
`AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY` is available to that process.

A key exported only in an interactive shell will not be visible to a
launchd/systemd daemon unless that environment is explicitly imported. Set
the key in `~/.apus/.env` or via `env.shellEnv` to ensure the gateway
process can read it.
Provider routing 
Vercel AI Gateway routes each request to the upstream provider named in the
model ref prefix. For example, `vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4.6`
routes through Anthropic, `vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5` routes through
OpenAI, and `vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6` routes through
MoonshotAI. One `AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY` authenticates all upstream providers.
Thinking levels 
`/think` options follow the upstream model prefix when Apus recognizes
it. `vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/...` uses the Claude thinking profile,
including the adaptive default for Claude 4.6 models. Trusted
`vercel-ai-gateway/openai/...` refs (`gpt-5.2` and newer, plus Codex
variants down to `gpt-5.1-codex`) expose `/think xhigh`. Other namespaced
refs keep the standard reasoning levels unless their catalog metadata
declares more.
App attribution 
Requests to `ai-gateway.vercel.sh` carry Vercel's documented app-attribution
headers, `HTTP-Referer: https://ami-docs.dev.apuscorp.com` and `X-Title: Apus`. This
also applies to custom provider ids whose `baseUrl` points at AI Gateway.
A custom proxy `baseUrl` gets no attribution headers.

Related

Model selection

Choosing providers, model refs, and failover behavior.

Troubleshooting

General troubleshooting and FAQ.