Implementation:Openai Openai python CLI Entry Point

Knowledge Sources	Openai_Openai_python
Domains	CLI
Last Updated	2026-02-15 00:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for the command-line interface entry point provided by the openai-python SDK.

Description

The _cli module implements the openai command-line tool. The main() function serves as the entry point, catching APIError, CLIError, and pydantic.ValidationError and displaying them via display_error(). The _build_parser() function constructs an argparse.ArgumentParser with global options for --verbose, --api-base, --api-key, --proxy, --organization, --api-type (openai/azure), --api-version, --azure-endpoint, --azure-ad-token, and --version. It registers two subparser groups: api (via register_commands) for direct API calls and tools (via _tools.register_commands) for client-side utilities. The Arguments class is a Pydantic BaseModel that captures all parsed CLI arguments with Pydantic v1/v2 compatible configuration. The _main() function configures an httpx.Client with optional proxy support and HTTP/2, sets module-level OpenAI configuration, and dispatches to the appropriate subcommand handler.

Usage

Use this module by running openai from the command line, or by calling main() programmatically.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: openai-python
• File: src/openai/cli/_cli.py
• Lines: 1-233

Signature

class Arguments(BaseModel):
    verbosity: int
    version: Optional[str] = None
    api_key: Optional[str]
    api_base: Optional[str]
    organization: Optional[str]
    proxy: Optional[List[str]]
    api_type: Optional[_ApiType] = None
    api_version: Optional[str] = None
    azure_endpoint: Optional[str] = None
    azure_ad_token: Optional[str] = None
    args_model: Optional[Type[BaseModel]] = None
    unknown_args: List[str] = []
    allow_unknown_args: bool = False

def _build_parser() -> argparse.ArgumentParser: ...
def main() -> int: ...

Import

from openai.cli._cli import main

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
sys.argv	list[str]	Yes	Command-line arguments passed to the openai CLI
--api-key / -k	str	No	API key to use for authentication
--api-base / -b	str	No	Base URL for API calls
--organization / -o	str	No	Organization ID
--proxy / -p	list[str]	No	HTTP/HTTPS proxy URLs
--api-type / -t	"openai" or "azure"	No	Backend API type
--azure-endpoint	str	No	Azure endpoint URL

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
main() return	int	Exit code: 0 for success, 1 for error
stdout/stderr	text	Command output or error messages

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

# From the command line:
# openai api chat.completions.create -m gpt-4o -g user "Hello"

# Programmatic usage:
import sys
from openai.cli._cli import main

sys.argv = ["openai", "--version"]
exit_code = main()

Related Pages

• Environment:Openai_Openai_python_Python_3_9_Plus