Configuring the SDK

API keys and clients

By default the SDK reads the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable when first imported. If setting the variable is not possible you can call setDefaultOpenAIKey() manually.

Set default OpenAI key

import { setDefaultOpenAIKey } from '@openai/agents';

setDefaultOpenAIKey(process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY!); // sk-...

You may also pass your own OpenAI client instance. The SDK will otherwise create one automatically using the default key.

Set default OpenAI client

import { OpenAI } from 'openai';
import { setDefaultOpenAIClient } from '@openai/agents';

const customClient = new OpenAI({ baseURL: '...', apiKey: '...' });
setDefaultOpenAIClient(customClient);

Finally you can switch between the Responses API and the Chat Completions API.

Set OpenAI API

import { setOpenAIAPI } from '@openai/agents';

setOpenAIAPI('chat_completions');

Tracing

Tracing is enabled by default and uses the OpenAI key from the section above.

A separate key may be set via setTracingExportApiKey():

Set tracing export API key

import { setTracingExportApiKey } from '@openai/agents';

setTracingExportApiKey('sk-...');

Tracing can also be disabled entirely:

Disable tracing

import { setTracingDisabled } from '@openai/agents';

setTracingDisabled(true);

If you’d like to learn more about the tracing feature, please check out Tracing guide.

Debug logging

The SDK uses the debug package for debug logging. Set the DEBUG environment variable to openai-agents* to see verbose logs.

export DEBUG=openai-agents*

You can obtain a namespaced logger for your own modules using getLogger(namespace) from @openai/agents.

Get logger

import { getLogger } from '@openai/agents';

const logger = getLogger('my-app');
logger.debug('something happened');

Sensitive data in logs

Certain logs may contain user data. Disable them by setting these environment variables.

To disable logging LLM inputs and outputs:

export OPENAI_AGENTS_DONT_LOG_MODEL_DATA=1

To disable logging tool inputs and outputs:

export OPENAI_AGENTS_DONT_LOG_TOOL_DATA=1