Send your first request

Store a provider credential, create a virtual key, and send your first governed request through the AI Gateway.

In five minutes you will send a request through Altrum and see it in the request log. You need the Owner or Admin role, and an API key from a model provider such as OpenAI.

1. Add a provider credential

   Open AI Gateway, Provider credentials, and add your OpenAI API key. Altrum stores it encrypted and never shows it again. See Provider credentials.

2. Create a virtual key

   Open Virtual keys and create an organization key. Copy it now: it starts with sk-alt- and is shown only once. Save it in an environment variable:

   export ALTRUM_VIRTUAL_KEY="sk-alt-..."
   
3. Send a request

   Use the OpenAI SDK as you would anyway, with Altrum’s address as the base URL and the virtual key as the API key:

   import os
   from openai import OpenAI
   
   client = OpenAI(
       base_url="https://api.altrum.ai/v1",
       api_key=os.environ["ALTRUM_VIRTUAL_KEY"],
   )
   
   reply = client.chat.completions.create(
       model="openai/gpt-4o-mini",
       messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Where is my parcel?"}],
   )
   print(reply.choices[0].message.content)
   

   AI Gateway, Overview has the same code for the Anthropic and Google SDKs and for curl, with your address filled in.

4. Find it in the request log

   Open AI Gateway, Request log. Your request is there with its model, tokens, cost, time taken and the guardrails that checked it.

Next

• Use Claude Code or another coding agent through Altrum: Coding agents.
• Put guardrails on the traffic: Organization guardrails.
• Set a monthly budget: Budgets and rate limits.
• Prepare your code for refusals: Handle errors.