Getting started.

Get your API key

You have to be a member of the NaN community. Go to cloud.nan.builders, open your user settings and go to the API Keys section to generate yours.

The key is personal, non-transferable, and shown only once: copy it as soon as you generate it. If you lose it, nothing breaks, generate another one and delete the old one from the same panel.

Keep it in an environment variable

# macOS and Linux
export NAN_API_KEY="sk-your-key"

# Windows, PowerShell
$env:NAN_API_KEY = "sk-your-key"

That only lasts as long as the terminal does. To make it survive closing it, add the line to your ~/.zshrc, your ~/.bashrc or your PowerShell profile.

Make your first call

curl https://api.nan.builders/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "deepseek-v4-flash",
    "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Introduce yourself in one line." }]
  }'

If all goes well you get back a JSON and the model’s text is in choices[0].message.content:

{
  "id": "chatcmpl-...",
  "model": "deepseek-v4-flash",
  "choices": [
    { "index": 0, "message": { "role": "assistant", "content": "I am an open model..." } }
  ],
  "usage": { "prompt_tokens": 14, "completion_tokens": 23, "total_tokens": 37 }
}

You now have access to the cluster. Everything else is a variation on that same call.

The same thing from your code

Use the official OpenAI SDK and change its base_url. There is no NaN library to install.

# pip install openai
import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["NAN_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://api.nan.builders/v1",
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-v4-flash",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Introduce yourself in one line."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

// npm install openai
import OpenAI from 'openai';

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.NAN_API_KEY,
  baseURL: 'https://api.nan.builders/v1',
});

const resp = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'deepseek-v4-flash',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Introduce yourself in one line.' }],
});
console.log(resp.choices[0].message.content);

There are more examples, including embeddings, speech, images and web search, in Examples.

Choose your model

deepseek-v4-flash is a good starting point, but it is neither the only one nor the best at everything. The full list, with what each one is good for, is in Choose your model.

And the list your key can actually use is always the one the API gives you:

curl https://api.nan.builders/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NAN_API_KEY"

Connect your editor or your agent

Cursor, Codex, VS Code, Cline, OpenCode, Zed and company are configured with those same two values. Each one asks for them somewhere different, and that is what Set up your agent collects, with one page per tool.

Claude Code is the one exception, and it is not a matter of where the fields go: it speaks Anthropic’s protocol, so it does not point at NaN directly. Its page has the two ways around that.

If you use OpenCode, Codex, Pi or droid, the NaN CLI configures them for you without editing anything.