goose-litellm-provider

Configure Goose with a Local LiteLLM Proxy Provider

Set up Goose (CLI and Desktop) to use a local LiteLLM proxy as a custom provider. This covers the RedHat provider pattern — a local LiteLLM proxy backed by Vertex AI Claude models (no auth, http://localhost:4000).

For remote MaaS (Model as a Service) setup, see the goose-maas-provider skill instead.

Prerequisites

• Goose installed (goose CLI or Goose Desktop)
• LiteLLM proxy running locally (see skill litellm-vertex-ai-proxy to set one up); must be accessible at http://localhost:4000 (default LiteLLM port)
• Use skill litellm-proxy-status to verify the proxy is healthy before proceeding

Model Selection Architecture

Goose uses two separate model settings for this provider. They are independent — neither overwrites the other.

Setting	Where	Purpose
Default model	config.yaml → providers.custom_redhat.model	Main conversation model
Fast model	custom_redhat.json → fast_model	Lightweight model for auxiliary calls (tool-selection, classification, session titles)

Reference Configuration

The custom provider is defined as a JSON file under ~/.config/goose/custom_providers/ with a matching entry in ~/.config/goose/config.yaml.

Custom Provider JSON

File: ~/.config/goose/custom_providers/custom_redhat.json

⚠️ Use this exact schema. Do NOT write from memory or improvise field names. Copy this template and substitute only the marked placeholders.

{
  "name": "custom_redhat",
  "engine": "openai",
  "display_name": "RedHat",
  "description": "Local LiteLLM proxy to Vertex AI (Claude models)",
  "api_key_env": "",
  "base_url": "http://localhost:4000",
  "models": [
    {
      "name": "claude-opus-4-6",
      "context_limit": 1000000,
      "input_token_cost": null,
      "output_token_cost": null,
      "currency": null,
      "supports_cache_control": null,
      "reasoning": false
    },
    {
      "name": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
      "context_limit": 1000000,
      "input_token_cost": null,
      "output_token_cost": null,
      "currency": null,
      "supports_cache_control": null,
      "reasoning": false
    },
    {
      "name": "claude-haiku-4-5",
      "context_limit": 200000,
      "input_token_cost": null,
      "output_token_cost": null,
      "currency": null,
      "supports_cache_control": null,
      "reasoning": false
    }
  ],
  "headers": null,
  "timeout_seconds": 600,
  "supports_streaming": true,
  "requires_auth": false,
  "catalog_provider_id": null,
  "base_path": null,
  "env_vars": null,
  "dynamic_models": null,
  "skip_canonical_filtering": false,
  "model_doc_link": null,
  "setup_steps": [],
  "fast_model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
  "preserves_thinking": true
}