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Bring your own model: OpenRouter, DeepSeek, and Z.AI for Atmos AI

· 3 min read
Andriy Knysh
Andriy Knysh
Principal Architect @ Cloud Posse

The AI model landscape moves faster than any single vendor's roadmap. A model that was the obvious choice last quarter is often outclassed - or undercut on price by an order of magnitude - by one you hadn't heard of this quarter. Locking your infrastructure assistant to one vendor's API means you either overpay or miss out, and for teams outside the US, a US-only provider list can be a non-starter entirely.

The Problem​

Atmos AI let you talk to your infrastructure through a fixed set of API providers. If you wanted to try a cheaper or non-US model - route through an aggregator, run DeepSeek directly, or use a GLM model from Z.AI - you were out of luck unless you were willing to point the generic OpenAI provider at a hand-copied base URL and hope the defaults lined up. There was no first-class way to say "use OpenRouter" and get a sensible model, API-key variable, and endpoint out of the box.

The Fix​

Atmos AI adds three OpenAI-compatible API providers you can select by name:

  • OpenRouter (openrouter) - a router that fronts hundreds of models behind one API key. Switch models by changing the model slug (anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5, openai/gpt-4o, deepseek/deepseek-chat, ...) without touching anything else.
  • DeepSeek (deepseek) - the DeepSeek API directly, including deepseek-reasoner for the reasoning model. Low cost for a lot of everyday infrastructure questions.
  • Z.AI (zai) - Zhipu's GLM models over their OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

Each one behaves like every other Atmos AI provider: set an API key with the !env function, and optionally override the model, base_url, or token limits. Because they are OpenAI-compatible, they work everywhere the existing providers do - atmos ai ask, atmos ai chat, and the --ai flag.

How to Use It​

Add the provider under ai.providers in atmos.yaml and select it as the default:

ai:
  enabled: true
  default_provider: openrouter
  providers:
    openrouter:
      model: "deepseek/deepseek-chat"   # any provider-prefixed slug
      api_key: !env "OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

    deepseek:
      model: "deepseek-chat"            # or "deepseek-reasoner"
      api_key: !env "DEEPSEEK_API_KEY"

    zai:
      model: "glm-5.3"
      api_key: !env "ZAI_API_KEY"

Then ask away:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-...
atmos ai ask "What stacks and components do we have?"

See the full list of options on the AI providers configuration page.

Get Involved​

The provider list will keep growing as the model landscape shifts. If there's an OpenAI-compatible provider you want to see as a first-class name in Atmos, open an issue or a pull request on cloudposse/atmos - adding one is a small, well-templated change.