skip to content
Claude Code

Your tools

Claude Code

Two environment variables put Claude Code on Conifer. The session works exactly as before, and every turn comes back with a cost receipt.

Point it at the gateway

  1. Get a key

    Mint one in the console and save it as CONIFER_API_KEY. The API key walks through it.

  2. Set two variables

    terminal
    export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.conifer.build
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=$CONIFER_API_KEY

    The base URL has no /v1 suffix. Put both lines in your shell profile so every new terminal has them.

  3. Start Claude Code with a model

    terminal
    claude --model claude-haiku-4-5

    Use any Claude id from the catalog. Claude Code speaks the Anthropic wire, so the Claude models are the ones it can run on. The rest of the catalog is reachable through the MCP server below, or from the tools on the everything-else page.

The MCP server

terminal
claude mcp add conifer --env CONIFER_API_KEY=sk-conifer-… -- npx -y conifer-sdk conifer-mcp

The MCP server works with or without the variables above. It gives the session tools to ask any model in the catalog, run one prompt across several models side by side, and see what each call cost. It runs from the published conifer-sdk package through npx, so there is nothing to build. The MCP server section lists each tool.

With Palm

Palm lets you pause and resume Conifer routing and switch models mid-session without restarting claude. Install steps and the toggle keys are on Palm.

Inside a wrapper

Conductor, cmux and other apps that launch claude for you take the same two values, each from its own place. The per-wrapper recipes are on Conductor, cmux & Zed.

The desktop app

Claude Desktop does not read ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL. The variables above move the CLI onto Conifer and leave the desktop app where it was. To point the desktop app at Conifer, use its third-party inference setting.

  1. Install Claude Desktop and skip sign-in.
  2. Go to Help → Troubleshooting → Enable Developer Mode, then Developer → Configure Third-Party Inference.
  3. Set the provider to Gateway, the base URL to https://api.conifer.build, and paste your Conifer key. The default Bearer auth scheme works.
  4. Click Apply locally. The app relaunches and offers to start on that configuration instead of an Anthropic account.

The model picker shows the catalog’s claude-* models. For a fleet, Anthropic’s Claude apps gateway can use Conifer as its Anthropic upstream, with base_url set to https://api.conifer.build and your Conifer key as the upstream api_key.

A local model

conifer serve answers the same Anthropic wire on http://127.0.0.1:8080 for a model on your own machine. Chat works there. Agentic work belongs on the gateway recipe above. Details are on Serve an endpoint.