Coding Agent setup

Crush setup: API key, Base URL, and models

Install Crush, configure BetterToken in crushrc with an API Key and Base URL, select a model, and troubleshoot No providers configured.

Connect Crush to BetterToken with an openai-compat provider in crushrc. In macOS testing with a GPT model, Crush 0.98.2 completed three out of three cold-start text requests and a file-reading tool call through /v1/chat/completions.

Key settings

Field	Value
API Key	BetterToken API Key, passed with `--api-key`
Base URL	`https://bettertoken.ai/v1`, passed with `--base-url`
Model	`bettertoken/YOUR_MODEL_ID`
Provider type	`openai-compat`
Configuration file	`~/.config/crush/crushrc`

Prerequisites

Homebrew for the installation command below
A BetterToken API Key: register and get one
A Model ID and its context limit from the model plaza

Install

Use the Homebrew command from the official Crush repository:

brew install charmbracelet/tap/crush
crush --version

Manual setup

Set your BetterToken API Key in the terminal that will run Crush:

export BETTERTOKEN_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"

Create ~/.config/crush/crushrc using the recommended Bash configuration format. Replace every YOUR_MODEL_ID and set --context-window to your selected model’s documented limit. The example’s 128000 is a client declaration, not a verified BetterToken model limit.

provider add bettertoken --type openai-compat --base-url "https://bettertoken.ai/v1" --api-key "$BETTERTOKEN_API_KEY"
model add bettertoken/YOUR_MODEL_ID --name "YOUR_MODEL_ID" --context-window 128000
model large bettertoken/YOUR_MODEL_ID
model small bettertoken/YOUR_MODEL_ID
permissions allow view

Save these commands in crushrc; Crush runs them when it starts. permissions allow view permits the file-viewing tool. The older JSON configuration format is deprecated upstream but still works; its text request also passed in testing.

Verify the connection

Run from your project in the same terminal:

crush run "Reply with only: OK"

Check that the final answer is OK. For file access, ask Crush to read a known file in your project and check both the view tool result and final answer.

Switch models

Add another model with model add, update the model large and model small selections in crushrc, and start a new run.

Common errors

Symptom	What to check
`No providers configured`	Crush reports this before sending a request when no usable provider is loaded. Check the location and contents of `crushrc`, including project configuration that may override it.
`401`	Export `BETTERTOKEN_API_KEY` before starting Crush and check its value.
No explicit models in the config	With only a provider configured, Crush discovered models through `/v1/models` in testing. Explicit `model add` entries let you name the model used by this example.
File access needs approval	Check `permissions allow view` in the loaded configuration.

Technical details

The tested openai-compat provider sent generation requests to /v1/chat/completions. Model discovery used /v1/models when explicit model entries were omitted.