Providers and Models

PurrCode supports:

• Ollama;
• LM Studio;
• OpenAI;
• OpenAI-compatible APIs;
• enterprise gateways;
• NVIDIA NIM;
• environment-backed credentials;
• operating-system credential stores;
• custom CA bundles;
• proxies;
• mTLS;
• secret-backed headers.

Provider discovery

Inside the TUI or IDE:

/connect

PurrCode probes supported local endpoints and displays observed availability. Local discovery does not generate model output and does not load an unloaded model.

Import provider configuration

/connect import

Supported source formats: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, cURL, JSON, YAML, TOML, and dotenv. PurrCode parses imported configuration without executing it, and can extract provider type, base URL, model ID, API mode, request defaults, custom headers, authentication configuration, and local-or-remote classification.

Secret handling during import

Detected secrets remain in transient zeroizing memory until you choose one of:

• store the secret in the operating-system credential store;
• convert it to an environment-variable reference;
• discard it.

Raw secret values are never written into provider configuration or conversation events.

Manage credentials

purrcode credential set openai

Configuration stores a reference such as keychain:openai; the secret itself remains in the operating-system credential store.

Provider profiles

/provider list
/provider edit <name>
/provider test <name>
/provider remove <name>

Provider diagnostics

purrcode provider doctor

PurrCode classifies provider failures such as connection refused, DNS failure, TLS failure, authentication failure, HTTP error, content-type mismatch, incompatible schema, streaming framing failure, unsupported API mode, model not found, context too large, out of memory, and cancellation.

Local models

Ollama

PurrCode supports Ollama’s native API and inspects /api/version, /api/tags, /api/ps, and /api/chat. Native Ollama mode is separate from OpenAI-compatible mode, so API-mode mismatches are detected instead of surfacing as generic decoding errors.

LM Studio

PurrCode can discover LM Studio and compatible local endpoints running on loopback. Local-only mode rejects undeclared remote providers and does not silently fall back to cloud inference.

NVIDIA NIM

NVIDIA_API_KEY is detected during onboarding and models are enumerated from the NIM endpoint. NIM is a first-class provider.

Local model commands

/model recommend
/model qualify <model>
/model loaded
/model unload <model>
/model unload-all

Recommendations use observed evidence — model metadata, qualification, physical and available memory, swap pressure, loaded-model memory, context requirements, structured-output reliability, measured latency, and tool-calling support. A model is not recommended only because its name contains terms such as coder.

Pulling a model

When a recommended Ollama model is not installed, PurrCode can propose a governed pull action that requires explicit authorization, uses an exact validated model identifier, reports bounded progress, supports cancellation, and rediscovers models on completion.

Model lifecycle policies

Supported policies: unload_after_request, idle_timeout, keep_loaded, external. Low-memory systems use conservative concurrency and unload behavior. Opening PurrCode does not automatically generate output or load an unloaded model.