Connecting providers (operator)

Your agents need an engine to think, write, and execute commands. These engines are called providers. Lowkey supports four primary provider runtimes: Claude, Codex (GPT), Gemini, and Grok. Before your agents can do any work, you need to connect at least one provider.

Unlike most developer platforms, Lowkey does not require you to configure raw developer API keys for its standard subscription-based slots. Instead, it is built to run on your existing consumer subscription accounts.

Where this lives

To manage connections, open Settings → Providers in the web app. For each provider, you will see its current status, available models, local usage statistics, and authentication controls.

Connecting your subscriptions

Lowkey drives each provider’s command-line interface in the background to handle authentication. Depending on the provider, you will use one of two sign-in methods:

OAuth Code Pasting (Claude): Click Connect, then click the generated link to open the Anthropic authorization page in your browser. Sign in, copy the single-use authorization code, and paste it back into the Lowkey input card.
Device Code Approval (Codex and Grok): Click Connect to generate a verification URL and a one-time code (such as AAGO-NESNU). Open the URL in your browser, enter the code, and approve it. Lowkey polls in the background and automatically activates once the CLI writes its credentials file.

For developer workloads, a separate Claude SDK slot is available. Unlike standard subscription slots, this metered developer slot can be authenticated by pasting an Anthropic Console API key (sk-ant-...) or running the claude setup-token command.

Note: Direct connection for Gemini is not yet available in Settings. To authenticate Gemini, you must log into the CLI directly on your server host.

Connecting multiple accounts

If you have multiple subscriptions, you can connect multiple accounts for the Claude PTY slot. Under the Claude PTY Accounts section, click + Account, specify a label, and run the login flow for the additional account. Lowkey tracks the health of each connection and automatically routes new agent sessions to the healthiest account.

Setting defaults and session naming

After connecting your providers, you can configure their default behaviors in the LLM defaults panel:

Default Models: Choose which model runs by default when a conversation does not specify one.
Session Naming: Select the provider and model responsible for automatically generating chat titles.

Monitoring usage and limits

Lowkey displays real-time health and token consumption in the provider card. Because providers share rate limit data differently, Lowkey is transparent about where it gets its numbers:

Claude limits are retrieved by active polls to the Anthropic usage API.
Codex limits are parsed from local JSONL logs generated during active turns.
Grok and Gemini rate limits are currently unsupported and will display as unavailable.

Keeping credentials secure

Lowkey isolates provider credentials to keep your accounts secure. All access tokens are saved in your user directory (for example, under ~/.claude/ or ~/.lowkey/) with restricted 0o600 permissions. If you need to revoke access, click Disconnect on the provider card to immediately delete the token from the file system.