Pick a provider

Anton works with any of these provider options. You choose one during onboarding (the first time you run anton), and you can switch at any time with /llm in chat or by running anton setup. All keys are persisted to ~/.anton/.env, so they carry across sessions and workspaces.

At a glance

Option	Default model	Web search / fetch	Best for
MindsHub — recommended	Resolved from the live catalogue (sonnet / haiku tier defaults)	Native passthrough, zero setup	Best overall experience
Anthropic (bring your own key)	claude-sonnet-4-6	Native server tools	Anthropic accounts
OpenAI (bring your own key)	gpt-5.4	Native via Responses API	OpenAI accounts
Google Gemini (bring your own key)	gemini-3-flash-preview	Needs anton setup-search	Gemini accounts
Custom OpenAI-compatible	You choose	Needs anton setup-search	Ollama, vLLM, Together, Groq, LM Studio, Azure, …

Option 1 — MindsHub (recommended)

MindsHub is the default and recommended choice. During setup Anton resolves the planning and coding models from the server's live model catalogue — picking the models your key is actually entitled to use — and validates the connection with a real request against that configuration:

• Latest frontier models
• Faster responses
• Cost optimized
• Secure data connectors
• Native web search and fetch passthrough — no extra setup

During onboarding, if you don't have a MindsHub API key yet, Anton opens the signup page for you — it takes a few seconds.

The MindsHub host itself is not prompted for. To point Anton at a non-default host (staging, self-hosted), set ANTON_MINDS_URL in your environment or in ~/.anton/.env before running setup — setup honors it.

Option 2 — Bring your own key

Choosing "Bring your own key" presents four sub-options. In each case Anton validates the key with a quick probe call before saving it.

Anthropic

Enter your Anthropic API key and a model (default: claude-sonnet-4-6). Web search and web fetch run as Anthropic native server tools, billed on your Anthropic key — no extra setup.

OpenAI

Enter your OpenAI API key and a model (default: gpt-5.4). Web search runs natively through the OpenAI Responses API; fetching is covered by the same capability.

Google Gemini

Anton talks to Gemini through Google's OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Get a key at aistudio.google.com/apikey; the default model is gemini-3-flash-preview. Because this is a generic OpenAI-compatible endpoint, web search needs an external provider — run anton setup-search to configure Exa.ai or Brave Search.

Custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Works with Ollama, vLLM, Together, Groq, LM Studio, Azure, or any OpenAI-compatible API. You provide:

• Base URL — e.g. http://localhost:11434/v1 for Ollama
• API key — press Enter to skip if your endpoint doesn't need one
• Model name
• API version — leave blank for standard endpoints; required for Azure

After setup, Anton offers to configure a web search provider (Exa.ai or Brave Search) since generic endpoints don't expose search natively. You can run that step any time with anton setup-search — see Search providers.

Web search and fetch by provider

Anton exposes two web tools to the agent — web_search and web_fetch — both on by default. How they execute depends on your provider:

Provider	web_search	web_fetch	Setup
Anthropic BYOK	Anthropic native server tool	Anthropic native server tool	None — billed on your Anthropic key
OpenAI BYOK	OpenAI Responses API native	covered by web_search	None — billed on your OpenAI key
MindsHub	MindsHub passthrough	MindsHub passthrough	None — billed on your MindsHub key
Generic OpenAI-compatible (Together, Groq, Ollama, vLLM, …)	Exa.ai or Brave (you choose at setup)	stdlib HTTP GET (no key)	Run anton setup-search once

To opt out, set ANTON_WEB_SEARCH_ENABLED=false and/or ANTON_WEB_FETCH_ENABLED=false in your config. See Web search and Web fetch.

Switching providers later

• In chat: type /llm to change provider, model, or API key.
• From the terminal: run anton setup to re-run the full provider selection.

Both flows validate the new configuration before saving it to ~/.anton/.env.