Use OpenAI in Zed

Steps

1. 1
   Step 1.

   Create an API key on the OpenAI platform and make sure the account has credits or billing enabled.

2. 2
   Step 2.

   Open Agent Settings with agent: open settings, go to the OpenAI section and enter your OpenAI API key. Zed also reads OPENAI_API_KEY from the local Zed process environment.

3. 3
   Step 3.

   Add custom OpenAI models in your settings file when you need alternate model ids (example verbatim from Zed's docs; replace name with a current model id and set max_tokens to that model's context window).

   JSON

   Copy

   {
     "language_models": {
       "openai": {
         "available_models": [
           {
             "name": "gpt-5.2",
             "display_name": "gpt-5.2 high",
             "reasoning_effort": "high",
             "max_tokens": 272000,
             "max_completion_tokens": 20000
           }
         ]
       }
     }
   }