OpenAI¶

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that provides a suite of powerful language models. The Strands Agents SDK implements an OpenAI provider, allowing you to run agents against any OpenAI or OpenAI-compatible model.

Installation¶

OpenAI is configured as an optional dependency in Strands Agents. To install, run:

pip install 'strands-agents[openai]'

Usage¶

After installing openai, you can import and initialize the Strands Agents' OpenAI provider as follows:

from strands import Agent
from strands.models.openai import OpenAIModel
from strands_tools import calculator

model = OpenAIModel(
    client_args={
        "api_key": "<KEY>",
    },
    # **model_config
    model_id="gpt-4o",
    params={
        "max_tokens": 1000,
        "temperature": 0.7,
    }
)

agent = Agent(model=model, tools=[calculator])
response = agent("What is 2+2")
print(response)

To connect to a custom OpenAI-compatible server, you will pass in its base_url into the client_args:

model = OpenAIModel(
    client_args={
      "api_key": "<KEY>",
      "base_url": "<URL>",
    },
    ...
)

Configuration¶

Client Configuration¶

The client_args configure the underlying OpenAI client. For a complete list of available arguments, please refer to the OpenAI source.

Model Configuration¶

The model_config configures the underlying model selected for inference. The supported configurations are:

Parameter	Description	Example	Options
`model_id`	ID of a model to use	`gpt-4o`	reference
`params`	Model specific parameters	`{"max_tokens": 1000, "temperature": 0.7}`	reference

Troubleshooting¶

Module Not Found¶

If you encounter the error ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'openai', this means you haven't installed the openai dependency in your environment. To fix, run pip install 'strands-agents[openai]'.

References¶

API
OpenAI