ChatOpenAI

ChatOpenAI(
    system_prompt=None,
    model=None,
    api_key=None,
    base_url='https://api.openai.com/v1',
    kwargs=None,
)

Chat with an OpenAI model using the responses API.

OpenAI provides a number of chat-based models, mostly under the ChatGPT brand.

Prerequisites

API key

Note that a ChatGPT Plus membership does not give you the ability to call models via the API. You will need to go to the developer platform to sign up (and pay for) a developer account that will give you an API key that you can use with this package.

Examples

import os
from chatlas import ChatOpenAI

chat = ChatOpenAI(api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"))
chat.chat("What is the capital of France?")

Parameters

Name	Type	Description	Default
system_prompt	Optional[str]	A system prompt to set the behavior of the assistant.	None
model	'Optional[ResponsesModel | str]'	The model to use for the chat. The default, None, will pick a reasonable default, and warn you about it. We strongly recommend explicitly choosing a model for all but the most casual use.	None
api_key	Optional[str]	The API key to use for authentication. You generally should not supply this directly, but instead set the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable.	None
base_url	str	The base URL to the endpoint; the default uses OpenAI.	'https://api.openai.com/v1'
kwargs	Optional['ChatClientArgs']	Additional arguments to pass to the openai.OpenAI() client constructor.	None

Returns

Name	Type	Description
	Chat	A chat object that retains the state of the conversation.

Note

Pasting an API key into a chat constructor (e.g., ChatOpenAI(api_key="...")) is the simplest way to get started, and is fine for interactive use, but is problematic for code that may be shared with others.

Instead, consider using environment variables or a configuration file to manage your credentials. One popular way to manage credentials is to use a .env file to store your credentials, and then use the python-dotenv package to load them into your environment.

pip install python-dotenv

# .env
OPENAI_API_KEY=...

from chatlas import ChatOpenAI
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()
chat = ChatOpenAI()
chat.console()

Another, more general, solution is to load your environment variables into the shell before starting Python (maybe in a .bashrc, .zshrc, etc. file):

export OPENAI_API_KEY=...

Note

The responses API does not support the seed parameter. If you need reproducible output, use ChatOpenAICompletions instead.