Vercel AI SDK Integration - Helicone OSS LLM Observability

Warning

This integration method is maintained but no longer actively developed. For the best experience and latest features, use our new AI Gateway with unified API access to 100+ models.

How to Integrate#

Create an account and generate an API key

Log into Helicone or create an account. Once you have an account, you can generate an API key here.

Set up your Helicone API key in your .env file

HELICONE_API_KEY=<your-helicone-api-key>OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-openai-api-key>

Modify the base URL path

import { createOpenAI } from "@ai-sdk/openai";const openai = createOpenAI({  baseURL: "https://oai.helicone.ai/v1",  headers: {    "Helicone-Auth": `Bearer ${process.env.HELICONE_API_KEY}`,  },});// Use openai to make API callsconst response = streamText({  model: openai("gpt-4o"),  prompt: "Hello world",});

Configuring Helicone Features with Headers#

Enable Helicone features through headers, configurable at client initialization or individual request level.

Configure Client#

const openai = createOpenAI({  baseURL: "https://oai.helicone.ai/v1",  headers: {    "Helicone-Auth": `Bearer ${process.env.HELICONE_API_KEY}`,    "Helicone-Cache-Enabled": "true",  },});

Generate Text#

const response = generateText({  model: openai("gpt-4o"),  prompt: "Hello world",  headers: {    "Helicone-User-Id": "john@doe.com",    "Helicone-Session-Id": "uuid",    "Helicone-Session-Path": "/chat",    "Helicone-Session-Name": "Chatbot",  },});

Stream Text#

const response = streamText({  model: openai("gpt-4o"),  prompt: "Hello world",  headers: {    "Helicone-User-Id": "john@doe.com",    "Helicone-Session-Id": "uuid",    "Helicone-Session-Path": "/chat",    "Helicone-Session-Name": "Chatbot",  },});

Using with Existing Custom Base URLs#

If you're already using a custom base URL for an OpenAI-compatible vendor, you can proxy your requests through Helicone by setting the Helicone-Target-URL header to your existing vendor's endpoint.

Example with Custom Vendor#

import { createOpenAI } from "@ai-sdk/openai";const openai = createOpenAI({  baseURL: "https://oai.helicone.ai/v1",  headers: {    "Helicone-Auth": `Bearer ${process.env.HELICONE_API_KEY}`,    "Helicone-Target-URL": "https://your-vendor-api.com/v1", // Your existing vendor's endpoint  },});// Use openai to make API calls - requests will be proxied to your vendorconst response = streamText({  model: openai("gpt-4o"),  prompt: "Hello world",});

Example with Multiple Vendors#

You can also dynamically set the target URL per request:

const response = streamText({  model: openai("gpt-4o"),  prompt: "Hello world",  headers: {    "Helicone-Target-URL": "https://your-vendor-api.com/v1", // Override for this request  },});

This approach allows you to:

Keep your existing vendor integrations
Add Helicone monitoring and features
Switch between vendors without changing your base URL
Maintain compatibility with your current setup