Choosing your AI provider (Heuristic / OpenAI / Claude)

flyhelpdesk's AI is provider-neutral. You choose the engine that powers AI Assist and the autonomous agent, and you can switch any time with no code changes.

The three providers

• Heuristic — the default. Zero-config, no API key. It produces useful, ticket-grounded output from templates and light text analysis. Great for demos and privacy-sensitive installs, but it can't genuinely translate or match a real model's quality.
• OpenAI — any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: OpenAI itself, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, Together, or a local Ollama. You set the base URL, model and key.
• Anthropic (Claude) — Claude via the native Messages API.

Choose one in the UI

1. Go to Admin → Settings.
2. Under the AI section, use the segmented control to pick Heuristic, OpenAI or Anthropic.
3. For OpenAI, set the base URL and model (default gpt-4o-mini) and paste your API key. For Anthropic, set the model (default claude-opus-4-8) and your key.
4. Click Test provider — you'll see Connected — on success, or a red Failed with the reason.
5. Save.

Everything is per workspace. API keys are secrets: they're masked, only saved when you re-type them, and clearing one turns that provider off. Nothing here needs any server or file access — it's all on this page.

Tips

• Every real provider degrades gracefully to the heuristic if a call fails, so the UI never breaks mid-shift.
• If you select a provider but its key is missing, flyhelpdesk quietly falls back to Heuristic — run Test provider to confirm you're actually live.
• Tune AI_MAX_TOKENS, AI_TEMPERATURE and AI_TIMEOUT if responses feel too short, too random or too slow.