Supported Providers

Hivekeep ships with built-in providers across six capability families: language models (LLM), embeddings, image generation, web search, speech-to-text (STT), and text-to-speech (TTS). A single provider often covers several families: capabilities are auto-detected from one config entry. Additional providers (Mistral, Replicate, …) are available as first-party plugins, and you can write your own via the Custom Providers plugin path.

Provider Table

Provider	LLM	Embedding	Image	Search	STT	TTS	API Key Required
Anthropic	✅						✅
Anthropic (Claude Max)	✅						❌ (OAuth)
OpenAI	✅	✅	✅		✅	✅	✅
OpenAI (Codex CLI)	✅						❌ (OAuth)
Google Gemini	✅		✅				✅
OpenRouter	✅						✅
xAI	✅						✅
DeepSeek	✅						✅
MiniMax	✅						✅
Kimi (Moonshot)	✅						✅
OpenAI-compatible (custom base URL)	✅	✅					⚪ (optional)
Brave Search				✅			✅
SerpAPI				✅			✅
Tavily				✅			✅
Perplexity Sonar				✅			✅
SearXNG (self-hosted, custom base URL)				✅			⚪ (optional)
ElevenLabs					✅	✅	✅

This table is the exact set of built-in providers (see src/shared/provider-metadata.ts). Notably:

• Embeddings are built in for OpenAI and the generic OpenAI-compatible connector (point it at Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM, etc. for fully local embeddings). Other embedding sources come from plugins.
• Image generation is built in for OpenAI and Gemini.
• STT and TTS are built in for OpenAI and ElevenLabs.
• SearXNG is a self-hosted search connector: point it at your own SearXNG instance (custom base URL) to run web search privately, with no commercial search API. The instance must have the json format enabled (search.formats in settings.yml); the API key is optional and only needed for protected instances (sent via a configurable auth header). Do not configure it through the Tavily provider: SearXNG is not Tavily-compatible and will fail with HTTP 401.
• Providers such as Mistral and Replicate are not built in: they ship as plugins.
• OpenAI-compatible is a generic connector: you supply a custom base URL (and an optional API key) to point Hivekeep at any OpenAI-style endpoint, NewAPI, LiteLLM, llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM, Ollama, and similar. It serves both LLM and embedding capabilities (/chat/completions and /embeddings), so a single connector can run your agents and your semantic memory fully locally. Its model list comes from the endpoint’s /models; the API key is optional (local servers often need none).
• Local models without native tool calling still work. Some self-hosted models reject the native tools API (for example Gemma on Ollama, which returns 400 does not support tools). When Hivekeep detects this, it automatically switches that model to a prompt-based tool protocol, describing the tools in the prompt and parsing the model’s tool calls back out, so the agent keeps working. This happens transparently, with no configuration, and is remembered per model so there is no repeated failed attempt. A low TOOLS_TEMPERATURE and tolerant parsing further steady tool calls on small models.

Per-model metadata (context window, image/PDF support, reasoning, pricing, and the display label) is not configured per provider. It’s auto-filled from models.dev and managed in the Model Registry, where you can also enable/disable models, fix a wrong match, or override any value.

Capabilities

• LLM: Chat and text completion models used for Agent conversations
• Embedding: Vector embedding models used for memory storage and retrieval
• Image: Image generation models (used by generate_image)
• Search: Web search APIs (used by web_search and discovered via list_search_providers)
• STT: Speech-to-text (used by transcribe_audio)
• TTS: Text-to-speech (used by text_to_speech)

Search-provider capabilities at a glance

Search providers declare static capability flags so an Agent can pick the right one for the job. web_search honors what each provider supports and emits a warning when the LLM asks for something the provider doesn’t expose.

Provider	answer	freshness	domains	lang	location	Notes
Brave Search	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	Domain filter via site: operators in the query.
SerpAPI	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	Google as upstream; auth check uses /account (free).
Tavily	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	Purpose-built for LLM grounding; native answer synthesis.
Perplexity Sonar	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	LLM-with-search; recency caps at one month (year → month with warning).
SearXNG	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	Self-hosted metasearch; needs json enabled in search.formats. Domain filter via site: operators.

Configuration

Providers are configured in Settings > Providers in the Hivekeep UI. Each provider requires an API key (except those using OAuth).

A configured search provider is automatically picked up by the web_search tool. To make it the default for all Agents, set it under Settings > Models & Services > Default Search Provider: otherwise web_search falls back to the first valid configured search provider.

Subscription providers: sign in without a CLI

The subscription providers, Anthropic (Claude Max) and OpenAI (Codex CLI), bill against your existing Claude or ChatGPT plan instead of a metered API key. Both support two connection methods, chosen with a toggle in the Add provider dialog:

• Sign in (no CLI needed): pick “Sign in”, click the sign-in button, approve in the browser tab that opens, then paste back the authorization code the page shows. Hivekeep completes the OAuth PKCE exchange and stores the resulting tokens in its encrypted vault, refreshing them automatically. This is the recommended path and requires nothing installed on the server. For Codex, copy the code (or the whole http://localhost:1455/... address the page redirects to) and paste it back; Hivekeep pulls the code out.
• Credentials file: if you already use the official CLI on the same machine (claude / codex), leave the toggle on “Credentials file” and Hivekeep reads its OAuth tokens from ~/.claude/.credentials.json / ~/.codex/auth.json (an explicit path override is available for non-standard environments). Existing setups keep working with no change.

Both methods feed the same provider. Tokens obtained via “Sign in” never touch the CLI files: they live only in the vault, and are removed when the provider is deleted.

You can also just ask Queenie (the configurator Agent) to connect Claude Max or Codex: she opens the sign-in as an in-chat card (the same button + paste-the-code step), so you never have to leave the conversation.

Codex does not need its CLI model cache (~/.codex/models_cache.json): Hivekeep fetches your live, per-account model catalog straight from the Codex backend (the same source the CLI uses), so it always lists the models your plan actually supports. The CLI cache and a small built-in list are only fallbacks for when that request can’t be made. Per-model metadata is enriched from the Model Registry.

API Endpoints

Hivekeep exposes several provider management endpoints:

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/providers	List all configured providers
POST	/api/providers	Add a new provider (auto-tests connection unless skipTest: true)
PATCH	/api/providers/:id	Update provider config (re-tests connection unless skipTest: true)
DELETE	/api/providers/:id	Delete a provider (warns when removing the last with a given capability; never blocks)
POST	/api/providers/oauth/:type/start	Begin the CLI-free OAuth sign-in (PKCE) for a subscription provider; returns the authorize URL
POST	/api/providers/oauth/:type/complete	Finish sign-in: exchange the pasted code, store tokens in the vault, create the provider
GET	/api/providers/types	List all available provider types (built-in + plugin)
GET	/api/providers/capabilities	Check which capabilities are currently available
GET	/api/providers/models	List all available models across valid providers
POST	/api/providers/test	Test a connection without saving
POST	/api/providers/:id/test	Re-test an existing provider’s connection

Minimum Setup

To use Hivekeep, you need at minimum:

1. One LLM provider: For Agent conversations (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, xAI, or the built-in OpenAI-compatible connector pointed at any custom endpoint)
2. One embedding provider: For memory to work. Built in via OpenAI (e.g. text-embedding-3-small) or the OpenAI-compatible connector pointed at a local endpoint (e.g. Ollama with nomic-embed-text or qwen3-embedding); other embedding sources come from plugins

Optional but recommended:

• A search provider for web_search (Brave, SerpAPI, Tavily, Perplexity Sonar, or a self-hosted SearXNG instance)
• An image provider for generate_image (OpenAI or Gemini)
• A voice provider for text_to_speech / transcribe_audio (OpenAI or ElevenLabs)