Claude Code CLI.

Use any model through Aurora Gateway directly from Anthropic's Claude Code CLI.

Overview

Claude Code CLI is Anthropic's terminal-based AI assistant. When pointed at Aurora Gateway, it can use any model from any provider — not just Anthropic's Claude models. Aurora translates Claude Code's Anthropic-format requests to OpenAI format and routes them to the configured provider.

The gateway's Anthropic ingress (enable_anthropic_ingress: true) accepts requests at POST /v1/messages in Anthropic format, converts them to internal OpenAI /v1/chat/completions format, and translates the streaming response back.

Setup

Environment Variables

Set these in your terminal or add them to your Claude Code settings file:

# Required: gateway URL
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8080"

# Auth: use your gateway master key or managed API key
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="your-master-key"

# Model alias name (create it in the Models page)
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL="my-alias"

# PowerShell equivalents:
$env:ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8080"
$env:ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="local-dev-key"
$env:ANTHROPIC_MODEL="my-alias"

Persistent Config

Add the env vars to your Claude Code settings.jsonso you don't need to set them each time:

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "http://localhost:8080",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "local-dev-key",
    "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "my-alias",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL": "my-alias"
  }
}

Model Aliases

Claude Code has a hardcoded model list in its CLI. To use any gateway model, create a model alias in the Gateway Models page that maps a short name to the actual model. For example:

Alias name: minimax-m2.7
Target: MiniMax-M2.7

# Then use it in Claude Code:
claude --model minimax-m2.7

Auth

The gateway checks the Authorization header first, then falls back to x-api-key. Claude Code sendsAuthorization: Bearer <token> whenANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN is set, and x-api-key when onlyANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set.

Use ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN — it takes priority and directly matches the gateway master key.

If you see an auth conflict warning, run /logout inside Claude Code to clear any previously managed key, or removeprimaryApiKey from yourconfig.json.

How It Works

┌──────────────┐     POST /v1/messages (Anthropic format)     ┌──────────────┐

│ Claude Code  │ ──────────────────────────────────────────▶  │    Aurora    │

│ CLI │ │ Gateway │

│             │ ◀────────────────────────────────────────── │              │

│ │ Streaming SSE (Anthropic format) │ │

└──────────────┘                                            └──────┬───────┘

│
POST /v1/chat/completions
(OpenAI format)
│
┌────────▼───────┐
│ Provider │
│ (OpenAI, etc) │
└────────────────┘