Connect a provider

Deskworth is not a model provider. It looks for the command-line tools already installed on your machine, drives them headless in isolated workspaces, and reads their output stream. The subscription is yours, the credentials are yours, and they stay where the vendor put them.

LimitEach CLI runs with your own account: an API key, or a plan where the provider’s terms allow a tool like Deskworth to drive it. Deskworth never holds your CLI sign-in, each CLI keeps its own session, never pays for or resells usage, and never signs you in on a provider’s behalf. Any key you add stays in your Mac’s Keychain.

#Four served, twelve described

The core publishes a provider manifest, and this page reads it at the commit the site was built from 1. Four adapters are served today, three CLIs and a local model endpoint. Twelve more have a written descriptor and no adapter, they appear in the matrix below so the question has an answer, not to suggest a switch is about to be flipped.

EvidenceServed and expected never share a row. The manifest states it in its own words: an expected entry means the descriptor is written and the adapter is not. A guard refuses to file one among the other.

• VERIFIEDAnthropic, the claude binaryA real request went through on 2026-09-09, and that is the only reason this row says verified. Driven headless with a fixed argument list; the sign-in page opens only when its address matches a host declared for this vendor.
• AVAILABLEOpenAI, the codex binaryAn adapter exists and a Deskworth suite covers it without touching the network. Nobody watched a live request during this pass, so this row does not claim one.
• AVAILABLEGoogle, the gemini binarySame standing as Codex: covered by tests, not proven on the wire here. It has no sign-in command to drive, the CLI reads an environment variable, or signs in from its own interface. Deskworth says that in a sentence rather than offering a button that leads nowhere.
• PLANNEDTwelve adapters reached by API key or endpointDescriptors written, adapters not. Each row in the matrix names its transport, its authentication, what the vendor announces, where that was read, and what exactly is missing.

#What Deskworth never touches

• Your vendor credentials. Sign-in happens inside the CLI; whatever it stores, it stores where it normally does.
• The raw output of a sign-in. It contains an email address, a device token, the path of a credentials file, none of it crosses into the application, and none of it is logged.
• The command line. A connection runs a fixed argument list from a registry, never a string assembled at runtime and never a shell.

EvidenceExactly one thing is allowed through from a sign-in: an address, and only if it is https, its host matches one declared for that vendor, it carries no embedded credentials, and the host matches whole, a look-alike subdomain is refused, because comparing the end of a hostname is how look-alikes get in.

#Where to go next

• Driving a CLI, the ten states of a connection, and what each one asks of you.
• Providers by API key, what exists under that name today, and what does not.
• Provider adapters, the contract a command-line tool has to satisfy to be driven at all.