Providers

Account requirements, authentication, and settings for each language model provider you can use with Posit Assistant.

Positron connects to a range of language model providers. To connect one, run the command Authentication: Configure Language Model Providers, select the provider, and authenticate.

This page covers what each provider needs: the account to have ready, how you authenticate, and any Positron settings to configure first.

Please ensure you consult your provider’s privacy policy for information on the data they collect and how it is used. For reference links, see the Provider Privacy Information guide.

Posit AI

Posit AI is a hosted language model service from Posit, offering both chat models and code completions through Next Edit Suggestions (NES).

  • Account: a Posit AI account, which you can create at posit.ai
  • Authentication: sign in through your browser with OAuth

Amazon Bedrock

Sign in with the AWS CLI

  1. Download and install the AWS CLI
  2. Configure your AWS credentials for the AWS CLI
  3. Sign in with the AWS CLI

Configure AWS region and profile (optional)

Positron reads AWS_REGION from your environment and uses your default AWS CLI profile automatically, so most people can skip this.

AWS_REGION

Set this if your shell does not already have a region configured and your Bedrock-enabled account is not in us-east-1 (the default). Use the standard AWS region identifier (for example, us-east-1, eu-west-1, ap-southeast-1). The Amazon Bedrock endpoints and quotas reference lists the identifier for each location. Make sure the models you want are available in that region.

AWS_PROFILE

Set this if the profile you use for Bedrock is not named default, for example when you have a dedicated Bedrock role separate from your development credentials, or your Bedrock access lives in a different AWS account. Run aws configure list-profiles in a terminal to see your profiles.

To set either value, add it to the authentication.aws.credentials setting as an item keyed by AWS_REGION or AWS_PROFILE. These override any matching environment variables for Positron only. They do not affect your terminal or other tools. Changes require a restart to take effect.

Note

Do not set AWS_PROFILE if you use Posit Workbench managed credentials or environment variable credentials (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY). Both of those paths bypass named profile resolution, so setting a profile name causes credential resolution to fail.

Configure inference profile region (optional)

Positron uses cross-region inference profiles to route requests across multiple AWS regions for higher availability and throughput. Positron derives the inference profile region automatically from AWS_REGION by taking its geographic prefix:

AWS_REGION Derived inference profile region
us-east-1, us-west-2 us
eu-west-1, eu-central-1 eu
ap-southeast-1, ap-northeast-1 apac

Most users do not need to change this. Use the authentication.aws.inferenceProfileRegion setting to override the derived value if:

  • Your AWS account has Bedrock model access in a different geographic pool than your AWS_REGION implies. For example, you connect through us-east-1 but want to route inference through eu profiles.
  • You want a global inference profile, which Positron cannot derive automatically from any region.

Valid values are us, eu, apac, and global. This setting requires a restart to take effect.

If no inference profile exists for your preferred region, Positron falls back to the first available inference profile for that model. If a model has no inference profile at all, it does not appear in the model list.

Anthropic

  • Account: a Claude Console account with API access (Claude Pro, Max, and other subscription plans do not work)
  • Authentication: an Anthropic API key, or the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable

Get an Anthropic API key

To use the Claude models from Anthropic in Positron, you bring your own API key (BYOK). To obtain an API key from Anthropic:

  1. Log in to or create an account for Anthropic’s Claude Console.
  2. Navigate to the API keys management page.
  3. Select the Create Key button.
  4. Fill out any required information and select Add to generate your API key.
  5. Copy and save the API key to a password manager or another secure location.

Why a Claude Pro or Max subscription does not work

Anthropic does not include Claude API usage in its Pro and Max subscription plans, so signing in to Claude with OAuth does not grant access to the API that Posit Assistant needs. To use Claude with Posit Assistant, you need Claude Console access and an API key, billed separately from any subscription.

Support for OAuth sign-in depends on Anthropic offering API access to Posit Assistant through these plans. You can follow this feature request for updates.

Microsoft Foundry

  • Account: a Microsoft Foundry resource with one or more models deployed
  • Authentication: the endpoint URL and API key for your Foundry resource
  • Settings:

Positron accepts deployment-based Azure OpenAI URLs (for example, https://<resource>.openai.azure.com/openai/deployments/<name>/chat/completions?api-version=...) and automatically normalizes them to the supported v1 format. A message displays when this conversion occurs.

Configure a custom model listing

To use specific models instead of model-router, configure the positron.assistant.models.overrides.msFoundry setting:

"positron.assistant.models.overrides.msFoundry": [
  {
    "name": "gpt-4.1",
    "identifier": "gpt-4.1"
  },
  {
    "name": "gpt-5.3-chat",
    "identifier": "gpt-5.3-chat"
  }
]

Use the model name and deployment identifier from your Foundry resource for each entry.

OpenAI

  • Account: an OpenAI account, or any service that implements the OpenAI Responses API
  • Authentication: an OpenAI API key, or the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable. For a compatible service, also provide its base URL (or the OPENAI_BASE_URL environment variable)

Snowflake Cortex

GitHub Copilot Preview

  • Account: a GitHub account with Copilot enabled
  • Authentication: sign in through your browser with OAuth
Note

You can also sign in to GitHub via the Accounts icon in the Activity Bar. To sign out, use the Accounts icon or run the Accounts: Manage Accounts command. The Accounts section manages your GitHub authentication for all extensions that use GitHub, not just AI features.

Get GitHub Copilot access

GitHub Copilot is a proprietary tool from GitHub. To use GitHub Copilot for AI chat and code completions, you need a subscription for GitHub Copilot in your personal GitHub account. You can also be assigned a seat by an organization with a GitHub Copilot for Business subscription.

Students and faculty can use GitHub Copilot for free as part of the GitHub Education program. For more information, see the GitHub Education page.

Sign in with GitHub Copilot Enterprise

GitHub Copilot Enterprise runs on GHE.com (GitHub Enterprise Cloud), not github.com. Signing in requires two extra settings compared to a personal subscription.

Before you start, make sure your organization administrator has enabled GitHub Copilot for your enterprise and assigned you a Copilot seat.

  1. Open the github-enterprise.uri setting and enter your enterprise URL, for example https://octocorp.ghe.com.

  2. Run the command Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON) to open your settings.json directly. Add the authProvider key inside github.copilot.advanced:

    "github.copilot.advanced": {
  "authProvider": "github-enterprise"
}

    This setting will be indicated as an Unknown Configuration Setting. This is expected and you can ignore the warning.

  3. Save the file. A prompt will appear asking you to sign in to GitHub. Click it and complete the browser authorization flow. If no prompt appears, restart Positron.

For more detail, see GitHub’s guide on authenticating to GitHub Copilot on GHE.com.

Custom Provider Experimental

The custom provider works with any OpenAI-compatible API endpoint that uses the /v1/chat/completions endpoint for chat. We do not recommend using a local model as a custom provider. Read more about why local models are not there (yet) on the Posit blog.

  • Account: an account with your chosen OpenAI-compatible provider
  • Authentication: an API key and the provider’s base URL
  • Settings:

Configure a custom model listing

Some OpenAI-compatible providers might not implement the /models endpoint, which Positron uses to list available models. If this is the case for your provider, configure a custom model listing using the positron.assistant.models.overrides.customProvider setting:

"positron.assistant.models.overrides.customProvider": [
  {
    "name": "Claude Sonnet 4.5 via OpenRouter",
    "identifier": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
  }
]

DeepSeek Experimental

  • Account: a DeepSeek account with API access
  • Authentication: a DeepSeek API key, or the DEEPSEEK_API_KEY environment variable

Google Gemini Experimental

  • Account: a Google account with access to the Gemini API, with an API key created in Google AI Studio
  • Authentication: a Gemini API key, or the GEMINI_API_KEY or GOOGLE_API_KEY environment variable

Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform Experimental

Formerly Google Vertex AI.

  • Account: a Google Cloud project with the Agent Platform APIs enabled and access to the models you want to use
  • Authentication: authenticate with Google Cloud using Application Default Credentials (gcloud) or a service account (see below)
  • Settings:
    • authentication.googleVertex.credentials (required, or env vars): set your project ID and location, which take precedence over the GOOGLE_VERTEX_PROJECT and GOOGLE_VERTEX_LOCATION environment variables

Sign in with Application Default Credentials (ADC)

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI (gcloud)
  2. Run gcloud auth application-default login and complete the browser sign-in flow

Sign in with a service account

Set the following environment variables before launching Positron:

  • GOOGLE_CLIENT_EMAIL: the service account’s client email
  • GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY: the service account’s private key