OpenAI¶

Configure HolmesGPT to use OpenAI's GPT models.

Setup¶

Note

Requires a paid OpenAI API key, not a ChatGPT Plus subscription.

Configuration¶

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-api-key"
holmes ask "what pods are failing?"

Using CLI Parameters¶

You can also pass the API key directly as a command-line parameter:

holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --api-key="your-api-key"

Available Models¶

# GPT-4o (default)
holmes ask "what pods are failing?"

# GPT-4o mini (faster, but results are not as accurate)
holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --model="gpt-4o-mini"

# GPT-5
holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --model="gpt-5"

GPT-5 Reasoning Effort¶

When using GPT-5 models, you can control the reasoning effort level by setting the REASONING_EFFORT environment variable. This allows you to balance between response quality and processing time/cost.

# Use minimal reasoning effort for faster responses
export REASONING_EFFORT="minimal"
holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --model="gpt-5"

# Use default reasoning effort
export REASONING_EFFORT="medium"
holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --model="gpt-5"

# Use high reasoning effort for complex investigations
export REASONING_EFFORT="high"
holmes ask "what pods are failing?" --model="gpt-5"

Available reasoning effort levels:

minimal - Fastest responses, suitable for simple queries
low - Balance between speed and quality
medium - Standard reasoning depth (default)
high - Deeper reasoning for complex problems

For more details on reasoning effort levels, refer to the OpenAI documentation.

Additional Resources¶

HolmesGPT uses the LiteLLM API to support OpenAI provider. Refer to LiteLLM OpenAI docs for more details.