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

Property Value
Provider vercel-ai-gateway
Auth AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
API Anthropic Messages compatible
Model catalog Auto-discovered via /v1/models
Genesis auto-discovers the Gateway `/v1/models` catalog, so `/models vercel-ai-gateway` includes current model refs such as `vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5` and `vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6`.

Getting started

Set the API key

Run onboarding and choose the AI Gateway auth option:

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

Set a default model

Add the model to your Genesis config:

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

Verify the model is available

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

Non-interactive example

For scripted or CI setups, pass all values on the command line:

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

Model ID shorthand

Genesis accepts Vercel Claude shorthand model refs and normalizes them 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
You can use either the shorthand or the fully qualified model ref in your configuration. Genesis resolves the canonical form automatically.

Advanced configuration

Environment variable for daemon processes

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

<div class="callout warning">
A key set only in `~/.profile` will not be visible to a launchd/systemd
daemon unless that environment is explicitly imported. Set the key in
`~/.genesis/.env` or via `env.shellEnv` to ensure the gateway process can
read it.
</div>

Provider routing

Vercel AI Gateway routes requests to the upstream provider based on the model
ref prefix. For example, `vercel-ai-gateway/anthropic/claude-opus-4.6` routes
through Anthropic, while `vercel-ai-gateway/openai/gpt-5.5` routes through
OpenAI and `vercel-ai-gateway/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6` routes through
MoonshotAI. Your single `AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY` handles authentication for all
upstream providers.

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