Function: providerFromEnv()

providerFromEnv(opts?): ProviderFromEnv

Defined in: src/adapters/llm/createProvider.ts:142

Resolve an LLMProvider from environment variables — drop your company's values in .env and the right provider is configured automatically, with no code branching. (Node only — reads process.env; the vendor SDK is lazy-loaded only for the detected provider.)

Detection order (first match wins):

1. Ollama (local) — OLLAMA_MODEL names a model, e.g. qwen3 [+ OLLAMA_HOST for a runtime that isn't on localhost]
2. Azure OpenAI — AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY + (AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT | OPENAI_BASE_URL) + AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION
   • (AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT | MODEL_NAME). AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT and OPENAI_BASE_URL are two spellings of the same resource root and reach the identical URL; the returned model is the deployment you named.
3. Anthropic — ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
4. OpenAI — OPENAI_API_KEY Otherwise throws (or returns the mock when { fallbackToMock: true }).

Why the local model goes first. Every other arm triggers on a CREDENTIAL, and credentials arrive in a shell by accident all the time — a key exported in .zshrc two months ago for something else. OLLAMA_MODEL triggers on a NAME you had to choose and type, so its presence is a declaration rather than a leftover: someone who writes OLLAMA_MODEL=qwen3 has said which model they want this run to use, and honoring the cloud key instead would both ignore them and cost them money. (OLLAMA_HOST alone is NOT a trigger — people export it just to run Ollama, and it must not hijack an app that never asked for a local model.)

No probing. This function reads environment variables and nothing else. It never opens a socket to see whether a daemon is up — its answer stays deterministic, instant, and identical on a laptop and in CI. If OLLAMA_MODEL is set and the daemon is down, you get the provider, and the refusal arrives from the call itself with ollama serve in the message.

Parameters

opts?

fallbackToMock?

boolean

Returns

ProviderFromEnv

Example

import { providerFromEnv } from 'agentfootprint';
  const { provider, model, kind } = providerFromEnv({ fallbackToMock: true });
  const agent = Agent.create({ provider, model }).build();