Factory Droid with AI Gateway

Factory Droid is Factory's terminal coding agent. It supports bring-your-own-key custom models, which you can point at AI Gateway for unified model access and spend monitoring.

Run the Vercel CLI setup command for Factory Droid:

npx vercel ai-gateway setup --agent droid

The command writes BYOK customModels entries into ~/.factory/settings.json referencing AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY through Droid's environment-variable syntax, with a picker shortlist of the top gateway models ranked by leaderboard spend. Re-run it to refresh the list.

If you can't use the Vercel CLI, configure Factory Droid manually:

1. Create an API key

   Go to the AI Gateway section in the Vercel dashboard sidebar and click API keys to create a new API key.

2. Export the key

   Export the key in your shell:

   Terminal

   export AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY="your-ai-gateway-api-key"

   To persist the key, add the same line to your shell's startup file. Droid resolves ${AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY} in its settings at load time, so the key never lands in the file.

3. Add custom models to Droid

   Add BYOK entries to ~/.factory/settings.json:

   ~/.factory/settings.json

   {
     "customModels": [
       {
         "model": "openai/gpt-6-astra",
         "displayName": "openai/gpt-6-astra",
         "baseUrl": "https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/coding-agent/v1",
         "apiKey": "${AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY}",
         "provider": "generic-chat-completion-api",
         "maxOutputTokens": 128000
       }
     ]
   }

   customModels defines the whole /model picker. Droid does no model discovery, so add one entry per gateway model you want available, each with its own maxOutputTokens.

4. Start Droid

   Terminal

   droid

   Pick a model with /model in a session. For headless runs, always pass a gateway model:

   Terminal

   droid exec -m openai/gpt-6-astra

   droid exec defaults to a Factory-hosted model that your gateway key can't use, so name a gateway model explicitly.

View your usage, spend, and request activity in the AI Gateway section in the Vercel dashboard sidebar. See the observability documentation for more details.

• Browse the models catalog for available models
• Configure spend limits on your API key
• Read the Factory documentation for Droid options