Use all four providers in one app

Problem

You want your app to support the major local AI tools, but each one has a different interface:

• Codex uses the codex CLI with OpenAI auth
• Claude Code uses the claude CLI with Anthropic auth
• OpenCode uses its own CLI with free and paid model tiers
• Ollama exposes an HTTP API with no auth

Writing and maintaining four integrations is a lot of work.

Why normal API integration is annoying

You would need to:

• learn four CLIs or APIs
• implement four auth flows
• normalize four response formats
• handle four different error styles

How switchboard-ai-sdk solves it

switchboard-ai-sdk exposes one API for all four providers:

import { discover, connect } from "switchboard-ai-sdk";

const tools = await discover();
const supported = ["codex", "claude-code", "opencode", "ollama"];

const available = supported
  .map((id) => tools.find((t) => t.id === id && t.available))
  .filter(Boolean);

if (available.length === 0) {
  throw new Error("No supported AI tool found.");
}

// Let the user pick, or default to the first one
const tool = await connect(available[0].id);
const result = await tool.chat({
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello!" }],
});

console.log(result.message.content);

Normalized capabilities

The SDK exposes each tool with the same shape:

• id — provider identifier
• type — agent or runtime
• capabilities — what the tool can do
• models / defaultModel — available and default models
• health() — readiness check
• checkAuth?() / startAuth?() — auth helpers for agent tools
• chat() — unified chat interface

Minimal provider switcher UI

const options = tools
  .filter((t) => supported.includes(t.id))
  .map((t) => ({ id: t.id, name: t.name, available: t.available }));

// Render options in your UI and connect to the selected id
const selected = await connect(userChoice);

Limitations

• Provider-specific features may not be exposed through the unified API
• Agent tools can modify files; warn users and set sandbox levels appropriately
• Each provider still has its own model availability and auth state