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Vercel AI Gateway Setup: Auth and Model Selection

Learn how to set up the Vercel AI Gateway provider in OpenClaw, including API key configuration and model selection. This guide is for developers integrating multiple AI models through a single endpoint.

Read this when

  • You want to use Vercel AI Gateway with OpenClaw
  • You need the API key env var or CLI auth choice

The Vercel AI Gateway offers a single API endpoint that gives you access to hundreds of models.

PropertyValue
Providervercel-ai-gateway
Package@openclaw/vercel-ai-gateway-provider
AuthAI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
APIAnthropic Messages compatible
Base URLhttps://ai-gateway.vercel.sh
Model catalogAuto-discovered via /v1/models

Tip

OpenClaw automatically finds the Gateway /v1/models catalog, so both the /models vercel-ai-gateway chat command and openclaw models list --provider vercel-ai-gateway contain current model references such as vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5 and vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6.

Getting started

Install the plugin

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/vercel-ai-gateway-provider

Set the API key

openclaw onboard --auth-choice ai-gateway-api-key

Set a default model

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

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider vercel-ai-gateway

Non-interactive example

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --mode local \
  --auth-choice ai-gateway-api-key \
  --ai-gateway-api-key "$AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY"

Model ID shorthand

OpenClaw resolves Claude shorthand model references at runtime:

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

Tip

You can use either form in your configuration; OpenClaw automatically resolves the canonical anthropic/... reference.

Advanced configuration

Environment variable for daemon processes

If the OpenClaw Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY is available to that process.

Warning

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 ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv to ensure the gateway process can read it.

Provider routing

Vercel AI Gateway sends each request to the upstream provider indicated by the model reference prefix. For instance, vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4.6 goes through Anthropic, vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5 goes through OpenAI, and vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6 goes through MoonshotAI. A single AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY authenticates all upstream providers.

Thinking levels

/think options follow the upstream model prefix when OpenClaw 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/... references (gpt-5.2 and newer, plus Codex variants down to gpt-5.1-codex) expose /think xhigh. Other namespaced references keep the standard reasoning levels unless their catalog metadata declares more.