AI Providers

Supported providers

getbot supports three LLM providers out of the box. Each maps to an OpenClaw-compatible environment variable:

Provider	Value	Environment variable	Key prefix
Claude (Anthropic)	anthropic	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	sk-ant-
ChatGPT (OpenAI)	openai	OPENAI_API_KEY	sk-
Gemini (Google)	google	GEMINI_API_KEY	(none)

Choosing a provider

You select your provider during setup or init. The provider determines which environment variable is injected into the bot's Docker container and which API key validation rules apply.

All three providers work with OpenClaw — the agent runtime handles model selection internally based on which API key is available.

Switching providers

To switch an existing installation to a different provider, update your config:

getbot config set llm_provider openai
getbot config set llm_api_key sk-proj-...

Then redeploy your bot to apply the change:

getbot bots install --email alice@acme.com --team marketing --host my-server

The new provider's environment variable and key will be injected into the container on the next deploy.

Key validation

getbot validates your API key during setup to catch common mistakes early:

• Prefix check — Anthropic keys must start with sk-ant-, OpenAI keys with sk-
• Cross-provider detection — if you paste an Anthropic key when OpenAI is selected, getbot tells you: "This looks like a Claude (Anthropic) key"
• Empty key — caught immediately with a link to the provider's key management page

Google (Gemini) keys have no prefix convention, so only empty-key validation applies.

Key storage

API keys are stored in ~/.getbot/config.yaml on your local machine. They are:

• Redacted in output — getbot config list shows sk-ant-**** instead of the full key
• Injected at deploy time — sent to the server over SSH only during bot installation
• Stored in the bot's Docker Compose config — inside the org container, injected as an environment variable at runtime. Treat server/container access as sensitive and rotate keys if that access is compromised

See API Keys for more details on key management and security.

Environment variable override

You can override the stored provider and key with environment variables:

GETBOT_LLM_PROVIDER=openai GETBOT_LLM_API_KEY=sk-... getbot install --email alice@acme.com --team marketing

Environment variables take precedence over the config file. This is useful for CI/CD where secrets come from the pipeline environment. See CI Automation for more patterns.

Backward compatibility

If you configured getbot before multi-provider support was added, your anthropic_api_key config value is still recognized. getbot falls back to it automatically when llm_provider and llm_api_key are not set. No migration needed — your existing config just works.