Crush

Crush is a terminal coding agent from Charmbracelet, written in Go, that lets you declare any OpenAI-compatible custom provider in crush.json. Point base_url at aicentos and the models aicentos offers become usable right in the TUI.

PrerequisitesCopy anchor link

First create a dedicated key for Crush on the console's "API Keys" page (naming it crush makes usage easier to track):

• Console: https://aicentos.com
• Create a key: https://aicentos.com/keys
• Top up when the balance runs out: https://aicentos.com/wallet

Confirm Crush is installed:

crush --version

Configuration to fill inCopy anchor link

Setup stepsCopy anchor link

1. Set the API Key environment variableCopy anchor link

export AICENTOS_API_KEY="sk-your-API-Key"

To persist it, add the line to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc, then source the file.

2. Edit crush.jsonCopy anchor link

The global configuration file lives at ~/.config/crush/crush.json (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\crush\crush.json on Windows); a .crush.json or crush.json in the project root overrides the global configuration.

Write:

{
  "$schema": "https://charm.land/crush.json",
  "providers": {
    "aicentos": {
      "type": "openai-compat",
      "base_url": "https://aicentos.com/v1",
      "api_key": "$AICENTOS_API_KEY",
      "models": [
        {
          "id": "gpt-4o",
          "name": "GPT-4o",
          "context_window": 128000,
          "default_max_tokens": 8192,
          "can_reason": true
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

models[].id must exactly match the model ID on the endpoint side — follow the Model Gallery in the console; see Supported models.

3. Select the modelCopy anchor link

After starting crush, press Ctrl+L in the TUI (or type /model) and confirm you can see aicentos and its models.

TestCopy anchor link

Do a quick check in non-interactive mode:

crush run "Answer in one sentence: what is 1+1?"

Add --debug when you need request logs. If you get a 404, check that base_url includes /v1.

NotesCopy anchor link

• Do not set type to openai. openai is for proxies that actually go through OpenAI (or Azure OpenAI); when pointing at a third-party compatible endpoint you must use openai-compat, otherwise you get model recognition errors or API errors.
• Enter base_url up to /v1, with no trailing slash.
• api_key supports $VAR and $(command) expansion; keep the key in an environment variable or a secrets file rather than hard-coding plain text.
• For an Anthropic-protocol endpoint (type set to anthropic), base_url should stop at /api — Crush appends /v1/messages itself, and you additionally need to declare anthropic-version in extra_headers.
• Known issue: with a custom provider, the token counter and cost statistics in the TUI may show 0; this does not affect actual requests or billing.
• To enable reasoning output, use "can_reason": true together with "reasoning_effort" for OpenAI-style models, and "think": true for Anthropic-style models.

Related linksCopy anchor link

• Custom Provider documentation: https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush