One API key, three terminals: driving many models from the shell with llm, mods and aichat

The fastest way to use an LLM is often not a chat window — it's a pipe. git diff | ... "write a commit message", ... "explain this error" < stderr.log, cat main.py | ... "find the bug". Three of the best command-line tools for this — llm, mods, and aichat — all accept a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint, which means one key can back all three and give you Claude, GPT, Gemini and more from the shell.

This is the terminal setup, end to end. It's genuinely tool-agnostic: every config below works against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. I use daoxe as the example endpoint (disclosure below); swap the base URL for your own.

Disclosure: I work on daoxe, an OpenAI-compatible gateway (it also speaks Anthropic Messages natively). Everything here is standard OpenAI-compatible config — point these tools at whatever endpoint you trust.

One convention across all three: the key lives in an environment variable, DAOXE_API_KEY, never on the command line (so it doesn't land in your shell history). And model ids are account-scoped — list yours with curl https://daoxe.com/v1/models -H "Authorization: Bearer $DAOXE_API_KEY".

1. llm (Simon Willison) — the extensible one