By default, the SDK looks for theOPENAI_API_KEY environment variable for LLM requests and tracing, as soon as it is imported. If you are unable to set that environment variable before your app starts, you can use theset_default_openai_key() function to set the key.

fromagentsimportset_default_openai_keyset_default_openai_key("sk-...")

Alternatively, you can also configure an OpenAI client to be used. By default, the SDK creates anAsyncOpenAI instance, using the API key from the environment variable or the default key set above. You can change this by using theset_default_openai_client() function.

fromopenaiimportAsyncOpenAIfromagentsimportset_default_openai_clientcustom_client=AsyncOpenAI(base_url="...",api_key="...")set_default_openai_client(custom_client)

Finally, you can also customize the OpenAI API that is used. By default, we use the OpenAI Responses API. You can override this to use the Chat Completions API by using theset_default_openai_api() function.

fromagentsimportset_default_openai_apiset_default_openai_api("chat_completions")

Tracing

Tracing is enabled by default. It uses the OpenAI API keys from the section above by default (i.e. the environment variable or the default key you set). You can specifically set the API key used for tracing by using theset_tracing_export_api_key function.

fromagentsimportset_tracing_export_api_keyset_tracing_export_api_key("sk-...")

You can also disable tracing entirely by using theset_tracing_disabled() function.

fromagentsimportset_tracing_disabledset_tracing_disabled(True)

Debug logging

The SDK has two Python loggers without any handlers set. By default, this means that warnings and errors are sent tostdout, but other logs are suppressed.

To enable verbose logging, use theenable_verbose_stdout_logging() function.

fromagentsimportenable_verbose_stdout_loggingenable_verbose_stdout_logging()

Alternatively, you can customize the logs by adding handlers, filters, formatters, etc. You can read more in thePython logging guide.

importlogginglogger=logging.getLogger("openai.agents")# or openai.agents.tracing for the Tracing logger# To make all logs show uplogger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)# To make info and above show uplogger.setLevel(logging.INFO)# To make warning and above show uplogger.setLevel(logging.WARNING)# etc# You can customize this as needed, but this will output to `stderr` by defaultlogger.addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

Sensitive data in logs

Certain logs may contain sensitive data (for example, user data). If you want to disable this data from being logged, set the following environment variables.

To disable logging LLM inputs and outputs:

exportOPENAI_AGENTS_DONT_LOG_MODEL_DATA=1

To disable logging tool inputs and outputs:

exportOPENAI_AGENTS_DONT_LOG_TOOL_DATA=1