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Legacy APIs

SDKs and CLI

Choose the right way to build with the OpenAI API: an SDK for applications, the CLI for terminal workflows, or the Agents SDK for orchestration.

This page covers the main ways to build with the OpenAI API: official SDKs for application code, the OpenAI CLI for shell-native workflows, the Agents SDK for orchestration, or your own preferred HTTP client.

Create and export an API key

Before you begin, create an API key in the dashboard, which you’ll use to securely access the API. Store the key in a safe location, like a .zshrc file or another text file on your computer. Once you’ve generated an API key, export it as an environment variable in your terminal.

Export an environment variable on macOS or Linux systems
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export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

OpenAI SDKs are configured to automatically read your API key from the system environment.

Install an official SDK

To use the OpenAI API in server-side JavaScript environments like Node.js, Deno, or Bun, you can use the official OpenAI SDK for TypeScript and JavaScript. Get started by installing the SDK using npm or your preferred package manager:

Install the OpenAI SDK with npm
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npm install openai

With the OpenAI SDK installed, create a file called example.mjs and copy the example code into it:

Test a basic API request
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import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI();

const response = await client.responses.create({
    model: "gpt-5.5",
    input: "Write a one-sentence bedtime story about a unicorn."
});

console.log(response.output_text);

Execute the code with node example.mjs (or the equivalent command for Deno or Bun). In a few moments, you should see the output of your API request.

Learn more on GitHub

Discover more SDK capabilities and options on the library’s GitHub README.

Use the Agents SDK

Use the official OpenAI SDKs above for direct API requests. Use the Agents SDK when your application needs code-first orchestration for agents, tools, handoffs, guardrails, tracing, or sandbox execution.

Agents SDK quickstart

Build your first agent with the Agents SDK.

Azure OpenAI libraries

Microsoft’s Azure team maintains libraries that are compatible with both the OpenAI API and Azure OpenAI services. Read the library documentation below to learn how you can use them with the OpenAI API.


Community libraries

The libraries below are built and maintained by the broader developer community. You can also watch our OpenAPI specification repository on GitHub to get timely updates on when we make changes to our API.

Please note that OpenAI does not verify the correctness or security of these projects. Use them at your own risk!

Clojure

Dart/Flutter

Delphi

Elixir

Kotlin

PHP

Rust

Scala

Swift

Unity

Unreal Engine

Other OpenAI repositories

  • tiktoken - counting tokens
  • simple-evals - simple evaluation library
  • mle-bench - library to evaluate machine learning engineer agents
  • gym - reinforcement learning library
  • swarm - educational orchestration repository