LLM Providers

Keel supports multiple LLM providers. The provider is selected automatically based on environment variables.

Provider priority

1. ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set → Anthropic Claude API
2. Otherwise → Ollama (local)

There is no silent fallback. If a model can’t be reached, the program fails with a clear error message.

Anthropic Claude

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-api03-...
keel run agent.keel

Model names in .keel files map to API model IDs:

Ollama (local)

See Ollama Setup for detailed instructions.

Model mapping

When using Ollama, Keel model names (like claude-haiku) need to be mapped to local models:

# Catch-all: all models → one Ollama model
export KEEL_OLLAMA_MODEL=gemma4

# Per-model: different local models for different roles
export KEEL_MODEL_CLAUDE_HAIKU=gemma4              # fast/cheap
export KEEL_MODEL_CLAUDE_SONNET=mistral:7b-instruct  # capable
export KEEL_MODEL_CLAUDE_OPUS=gpt-oss:20b           # heavy

Direct Ollama model names

You can also use Ollama model names directly in .keel files:

classify text as Mood using "ollama:gemma4"
draft "response" using "ollama:mistral:7b-instruct"

Strict validation

If a model name can’t be resolved, Keel fails immediately with instructions:

✗ Model 'claude-haiku' is not available locally.
Set one of:
  export KEEL_MODEL_CLAUDE_HAIKU=<ollama_model>
  export KEEL_OLLAMA_MODEL=<ollama_model>

Test mode

For automated tests:

KEEL_LLM=mock keel run agent.keel

AI primitives use fallback values. No network calls are made.