Quickstart - Consus Gateway

Defense contractors shouldn’t need months of cloud integration and compliance paperwork to use AI. Consus Gateway routes your requests through FedRAMP High and DoD IL5 authorized environments using the OpenAI SDK you already know. Change two lines and start building.

Prerequisites

An API key (request access to get set up)
The OpenAI SDK for your language, or any HTTP client

1. Install the OpenAI SDK

pip install openai

npm install openai

2. Configure the Client

Point the OpenAI SDK at Consus Gateway and pass your API key via the x-api-key header. Clients that can only send a Bearer token also work; see Authentication.

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.consus.io/v1",
    api_key="dummy",  # Required by SDK but not used for auth
    default_headers={"x-api-key": "CONSUS_API_KEY"},
)

import OpenAI from 'openai';

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: 'https://api.consus.io/v1',
  apiKey: 'dummy',
  defaultHeaders: { 'x-api-key': 'CONSUS_API_KEY' },
});

3. Make a Request

Swap the model parameter to use any available model. All requests stay within government-authorized cloud environments.

completion = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-5:itar",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(completion.choices[0].message.content)

const completion = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'claude-sonnet-4-5:itar',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Hello!' }],
});
console.log(completion.choices[0].message.content);

curl -X POST https://api.consus.io/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "x-api-key: $CONSUS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5:itar",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

What’s Next

Authentication: API keys and key management
Models: Available models and compliance levels
Chat Completions: Full request/response reference
Security: Data privacy and compliance