@openvole/paw-brain

Unified Brain Paw for OpenVole — a single paw that supports multiple LLM providers.

Supported Providers

| Provider | BRAIN_PROVIDER | API Key Env | Model Env | Default Model | |----------|-----------------|-------------|-----------|---------------| | Anthropic | anthropic | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | ANTHROPIC_MODEL | claude-sonnet-4-20250514 | | OpenAI | openai | OPENAI_API_KEY | OPENAI_MODEL | gpt-4o | | Google Gemini | gemini | GEMINI_API_KEY | GEMINI_MODEL | gemini-2.5-flash | | xAI | xai | XAI_API_KEY | XAI_MODEL | grok-3 | | Ollama | ollama | — | OLLAMA_MODEL | qwen3:latest |

Configuration

Option 1: Generic env vars

BRAIN_PROVIDER=gemini
BRAIN_API_KEY=your-api-key
BRAIN_MODEL=gemini-2.5-flash

Option 2: Provider-specific env vars

GEMINI_API_KEY=your-api-key
GEMINI_MODEL=gemini-2.5-flash

Provider-specific vars take precedence over generic BRAIN_* vars.

Option 3: Auto-detect

If BRAIN_PROVIDER is not set, paw-brain auto-detects the provider from available API keys in this order: Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, xAI, Ollama.

vole.config.json

{
  "brain": "@openvole/paw-brain",
  "paws": [
    {
      "name": "@openvole/paw-brain",
      "allow": {
        "network": ["*"],
        "env": ["BRAIN_PROVIDER", "BRAIN_API_KEY", "BRAIN_MODEL", "BRAIN_BASE_URL",
                "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY", "ANTHROPIC_MODEL",
                "OPENAI_API_KEY", "OPENAI_MODEL",
                "GEMINI_API_KEY", "GEMINI_MODEL",
                "XAI_API_KEY", "XAI_MODEL",
                "OLLAMA_HOST", "OLLAMA_MODEL"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Switching providers

Just change BRAIN_PROVIDER and the corresponding API key — no config file changes needed:

# Switch from Gemini to Claude
BRAIN_PROVIDER=anthropic
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Fallback provider

If the primary provider errors (rate limit, timeout, outage), paw-brain can automatically retry with a fallback:

BRAIN_PROVIDER=anthropic
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

BRAIN_FALLBACK=openai
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
BRAIN_FALLBACK_MODEL=gpt-4o          # optional

The fallback is only used when the primary throws an error — not for empty responses or tool narration.

Cost tracking

paw-brain reports token usage (input/output tokens, model, provider) back to core via AgentPlan.usage. Core uses this for per-task cost estimation.

• Cloud providers are priced from a built-in pricing table
• Local Ollama models (no :cloud suffix) show as free in auto mode
• Ollama cloud models (e.g. kimi-k2.5:cloud) are priced
• Set costTracking: "enabled" in loop config to track all providers