Connect a model

A teammate runs either on Hotline Agent, the built-in agent, with a model from a provider you connect, or on a harness such as Claude Code or Codex that brings its own sign-in. On a server, connecting providers is a one-time step you do on the server itself. Your phone can’t do it.

Every command here runs as the service account against the running desk. hotline wire reads its parameters from standard input, never from the command line, so a key stays out of your shell history and the process list. Start with a variable for the account:

H="sudo -u hotline HOTLINE_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/hotline/room hotline"

Note

This is the stopgap. An interactive hotline setup that walks you through providers, sign-ins and MCP servers is planned; until then, these commands are the way.

A provider with an API key

List the providers and their ids:

echo '{}' | $H wire providers.list

Then add a key, typing it at a hidden prompt so it doesn’t land in your history:

read -rs KEY && printf '{"providerId":"anthropic","label":"Server","secret":"%s"}' "$KEY" | $H wire credential.create; unset KEY

Ids include anthropic, openai, openrouter, google, xai, zai, zai-coding-plan, groq, deepseek, mistral and ollama-cloud. hotline status then lists the model under models.

A local model server

For Ollama, give its address. No key is stored:

echo '{"baseUrl":"http://127.0.0.1:11434"}' | $H wire credential.connect_local

Providers that sign in

ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and the sign-in forms of OpenRouter and xAI use a browser sign-in that hotline wire can’t finish on its own yet. Use an API key for now, or connect the provider in the desktop app and use that machine.

A harness that is already signed in

A harness uses its own login, not Hotline’s, so a teammate on Claude Code needs no provider at all if Claude Code is signed in for the hotline account. Harnesses live under that account’s home (/var/lib/hotline), not yours. Sign in as it, for example:

sudo -u hotline -H bash -lc 'npx -y @anthropic-ai/claude-code'   # then /login

When you add a teammate on the phone, the harness list shows what this server can run. Choose the signed-in harness there.