Providers & Models

Providers & models

A provider is the service that runs the language model behind your agent. Flowly works two ways: use Flowly Cloud credits — the default, nothing to configure — or bring your own key from OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Google, and others.

What a provider is

Every message your agent reasons about runs through a large language model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, Kimi, and so on. Those models are served by providers. Flowly doesn't lock you to one: pick the provider and model you want, switch any time, and the agent keeps working exactly the same — only smarter or cheaper.

Flowly Cloud credits

Sign in and go. One subscription gives you a curated set of top models — Claude, GPT, and more — billed as credits. No API keys to manage.

Bring your own key

Already pay OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Google, or Groq? Drop in your key and Flowly bills nothing — you pay the provider directly.

Any model

Switch the active model from a searchable picker. Use a fast cheap model for chat and a frontier model for hard tasks.

Switch any time

Change provider or model mid-project with /provider and /model. Your choice is sticky and applies on the next message — no restart.

Two ways to power Flowly

Flowly Cloud (recommended) — your Flowly account is the provider. Sign in and the agent immediately has access to a curated set of models, billed against your plan's credits. This is what most people use and what the hosted setup configures for you. Flowly Cloud →

Bring your own key (BYOK) — point Flowly at your own provider account instead. Flowly never touches billing; the provider charges you directly for what you use. Best if you already have an API key or want a model Cloud doesn't carry. Bring your own key →

You can have both

Add a BYOK key and stay on Flowly Cloud — Flowly remembers every provider you've configured. /provider flips between them instantly, so you can fall back to your own key whenever you like.

Quick start

From the terminal chat (flowly agent):

bash

/provider        # arrow-key switcher: pick Flowly Cloud or a BYOK provider
/model           # searchable list of that provider's models — pick one
/whoami          # confirm who's signed in and which provider is active

Already signed in to Flowly Cloud? You're done — the agent is using it. To add your own key instead, see Bring your own key.

How Flowly picks a provider

When more than one provider is configured, Flowly resolves the active one in a fixed priority order:

Your explicit choice — whatever you set with /provider (stored as providers.active). Sticky until you change it.
Flowly Cloud — if it's enabled and you're signed in.
Your own keys — the first BYOK provider with a key, in order: OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Gemini, Groq, Zhipu, vLLM.

Your pick wins, and it sticks

Setting an active provider overrides the cascade. If that provider later becomes unusable (say you sign out of Flowly), Flowly transparently falls back down the list and warns at boot instead of breaking.

Next steps

Flowly Cloud

Credits, plans, and the hosted model set

Bring your own key

Every supported provider and how to add it

Switching providers & models

/provider, /model, and the setup wizards

Configuration reference

The providers block, apiBase, key rotation