What Cloud Providers Do
Cloud providers connect Auxot to hosted AI APIs like OpenAI and Anthropic. They serve as the always-available fallback tier — when your GPU workers are busy or offline and your CLI workers are at capacity, requests automatically route to cloud APIs. This guarantees your team never hits a dead end waiting for inference.
Cloud providers are the lowest routing priority by default because they incur per-token charges, but you can override priority on a per-agent or per-request basis if you prefer a specific cloud model.
Setup
In the UI
Go to Settings → Providers → Add Provider and choose a cloud provider. Enter a name, choose the provider type, and paste the API key.
Via the admin agent
Add an OpenAI provider with API key sk-proj-abc123...
The admin agent validates the key, discovers available models from the provider’s API, encrypts and stores the key, and registers the provider in the routing pool.
Supported provider types: openai, anthropic.
Model Availability
When you add a cloud provider, Auxot queries the provider’s model list endpoint and caches the available models — no manual configuration needed. Go to Settings → Models to see what’s available, or ask the admin agent:
List all available models
Fallback Configuration
By default, cloud providers are the last fallback after local worker providers.
Cost Implications
Cloud providers charge per-token, which can add up quickly at scale. Check each provider’s pricing page for current rates:
In contrast, GPU workers have zero marginal cost after hardware investment, and CLI workers on fixed-cost subscriptions have predictable monthly costs regardless of usage.
Auxot’s auto-routing priority (GPU → CLI → Cloud) is specifically designed to minimize cloud spending. Cloud providers absorb overflow and provide high availability without becoming the primary inference path.
Managing API Keys
Cloud provider API keys are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM with the AUXOT_SECRET_KEY. Keys are never logged, never returned in API responses, and only decrypted in memory at the moment a request is proxied to the cloud provider.
To rotate an API key, go to Settings → Providers, open the provider, and update the key in the edit panel. Or ask the admin agent:
Update the OpenAI provider key to sk-proj-newkey...