Cohere

Cohere provides OpenAI-compatible inference through its Compatibility API. OpenClaw bundles the Cohere provider during its externalization transition and also publishes it as an official external plugin.

Property	Value
Provider id	cohere
Plugin	bundled during transition; official external package
Auth env var	COHERE_API_KEY
Onboarding flag	--auth-choice cohere-api-key
Direct CLI flag	--cohere-api-key <key>
API	OpenAI-compatible (openai-completions)
Base URL	https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1
Default model	cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026
Context window	128,000 tokens

Built-in catalog

Model ref	Input	Context	Max output	Notes
cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026	text, image	128,000	64,000	Default; flagship agentic and reasoning model
cohere/command-a-03-2025	text	256,000	8,000	Previous Command A model
cohere/command-a-reasoning-08-2025	text	256,000	32,000	Agentic reasoning and tool use
cohere/command-a-vision-07-2025	text, image	128,000	8,000	Vision and document analysis; no tool use
cohere/north-mini-code-1-0	text, image	256,000	64,000	Agentic coding; reasoning; free limits

Reasoning-capable Cohere models support two Compatibility API reasoning modes. OpenClaw maps off to none and every enabled thinking level to high. Command A Vision does not support tool use, so OpenClaw keeps agent tools disabled for that model.

Get started

1. Cohere ships with current OpenClaw packages. If it is missing, install the external package and restart the Gateway:

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/cohere-provider
openclaw gateway restart

2. Create a Cohere API key.
3. Run onboarding:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice cohere-api-key \
  --cohere-api-key "$COHERE_API_KEY"

4. Confirm the catalog is available:

openclaw models list --provider cohere

Onboarding only sets Cohere as the primary model when no primary model is already configured.

Environment-only setup

Make COHERE_API_KEY available to the Gateway process, then select the Cohere model:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "cohere/command-a-plus-05-2026" },
    },
  },
}

If the Gateway runs as a daemon or in Docker, set COHERE_API_KEY for that service. Exporting it only in an interactive shell does not make it available to an already-running Gateway.

Related

• Model providers
• Models CLI
• Provider directory