Claude Code

Use Claude Code with Codzen to get provider failover, budget controls, and usage visibility for your AI-powered coding sessions.

Why Use Codzen with Claude Code?

Codzen adds a reliability and management layer between Claude Code and Anthropic's API, giving you and your organization several key benefits.

Quick Start

This guide will get you running Claude Code powered by Codzen in just a few minutes.

Step 1: Install Claude Code

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Step 2: Connect Claude to Codzen

Instead of logging in with Anthropic directly, connect Claude Code to Codzen. This requires setting a few environment variables.

Requirements:

• Use https://codzen.ai for the base URL
• Provide your Codzen API key as the auth token
• Important: Explicitly blank out the Anthropic API key to prevent conflicts

# Open your shell profile in nano
nano ~/.zshrc # or ~/.bashrc for Bash users

# Add these lines to the file:
export CODZEN_API_KEY="<your-codzen-api-key>"
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://codzen.ai"
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$CODZEN_API_KEY"
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="" # Important: Must be explicitly empty

# After saving, restart your terminal for changes to take effect

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://codzen.ai",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "<your-codzen-api-key>",
    "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": ""
  }
}

Step 3: Start your session

Navigate to your project directory and start Claude Code:

cd /path/to/your/project
claude

You are now connected! Any prompt you send will be routed through Codzen.

Step 4: Verify

You can confirm your connection by running the /status command inside Claude Code.

> /status
Auth token: ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN
Anthropic base URL: https://codzen.ai

You can also check your Codzen dashboard to see your requests appearing in real-time.

How It Works

Codzen exposes an endpoint that is compatible with the Anthropic Messages API.

• Direct Connection: When you set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to https://codzen.ai, Claude Code speaks its native protocol directly to Codzen. No local proxy server is required.
• Anthropic Compatibility: Codzen's Anthropic-compatible endpoint behaves exactly like the Anthropic API. It handles model mapping and passes through advanced features like "Thinking" blocks and native tool use.
• Billing: You are billed using your Codzen credits. Usage (including reasoning tokens) appears in your Codzen dashboard.

Agent SDK

The Anthropic Agent SDK lets you build AI agents programmatically using Python or TypeScript. Since the Agent SDK uses Claude Code as its runtime, you can connect it to Codzen using the same environment variables described above.

GitHub Action

You can use Codzen with the official Claude Code GitHub Action. To adapt the example workflow for Codzen, make two changes to the action step:

• Pass your Codzen API key via anthropic_api_key (store it as a GitHub secret named CODZEN_API_KEY)
• Set the ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL environment variable to https://codzen.ai

- name: Run Claude Code
  uses: anthropics/claude-code-action@v1
  with:
    anthropic_api_key: ${{ secrets.CODZEN_API_KEY }}
  env:
    ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL: https://codzen.ai

Troubleshooting

• Auth Errors: Ensure ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set to an empty string (""). If it is unset (null), Claude Code might fall back to its default behavior and try to authenticate with Anthropic servers.
• Context Length Errors: If you hit context limits, consider breaking your task into smaller chunks or starting a new session.
• Privacy: Codzen does not log your source code prompts unless you explicitly opt-in to prompt logging in your account settings. See our Privacy Policy for details.