OpenAI¶

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that provides a suite of powerful language models. The Strands Agents SDK implements an OpenAI provider, allowing you to run agents against any OpenAI or OpenAI-compatible model.

Installation¶

OpenAI is configured as an optional dependency in Strands Agents. To install, run:

pip install 'strands-agents[openai]'

Usage¶

After installing openai, you can import and initialize the Strands Agents' OpenAI provider as follows:

from strands import Agent
from strands.models.openai import OpenAIModel
from strands_tools import calculator

model = OpenAIModel(
    client_args={
        "api_key": "<KEY>",
    },
    # **model_config
    model_id="gpt-4o",
    params={
        "max_tokens": 1000,
        "temperature": 0.7,
    }
)

agent = Agent(model=model, tools=[calculator])
response = agent("What is 2+2")
print(response)

To connect to a custom OpenAI-compatible server, you will pass in its base_url into the client_args:

model = OpenAIModel(
    client_args={
      "api_key": "<KEY>",
      "base_url": "<URL>",
    },
    ...
)

Configuration¶

Client Configuration¶

The client_args configure the underlying OpenAI client. For a complete list of available arguments, please refer to the OpenAI source.

Model Configuration¶

The model_config configures the underlying model selected for inference. The supported configurations are:

Parameter	Description	Example	Options
`model_id`	ID of a model to use	`gpt-4o`	reference
`params`	Model specific parameters	`{"max_tokens": 1000, "temperature": 0.7}`	reference

Troubleshooting¶

Module Not Found¶

If you encounter the error ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'openai', this means you haven't installed the openai dependency in your environment. To fix, run pip install 'strands-agents[openai]'.

Advanced Features¶

Structured Output¶

OpenAI models support structured output through their native tool calling capabilities. When you use Agent.structured_output(), the Strands SDK automatically converts your Pydantic models to OpenAI's function calling format.

from pydantic import BaseModel, Field
from strands import Agent
from strands.models.openai import OpenAIModel

class PersonInfo(BaseModel):
    """Extract person information from text."""
    name: str = Field(description="Full name of the person")
    age: int = Field(description="Age in years")
    occupation: str = Field(description="Job or profession")

model = OpenAIModel(
    client_args={"api_key": "<KEY>"},
    model_id="gpt-4o",
)

agent = Agent(model=model)

result = agent.structured_output(
    PersonInfo,
    "John Smith is a 30-year-old software engineer working at a tech startup."
)

print(f"Name: {result.name}")      # "John Smith"
print(f"Age: {result.age}")        # 30
print(f"Job: {result.occupation}") # "software engineer"

References¶

API
OpenAI