Connect Conductor

Conductor runs Claude Code agents in isolated workspaces. Point Conductor's Claude Code environment at https://api.preview.arena.ai (the gateway root, not /v1), pass your Arena API key as the Anthropic auth token, and each agent will route /v1/messages traffic through Arena's billing, logging, and rate-limit pipeline.

1. Create an Arena API key

  1. Open the Keys page and create a new key.
  2. Copy the key before closing the dialog. Conductor will use it as the Anthropic auth token.

2. Add Conductor environment variables

In Conductor, open Settings -> Env and add these variables under Claude Code.

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.preview.arena.ai"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="<your-arena-key>"
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=""
ANTHROPIC_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL="claude-haiku-4-5-20251001"
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="claude-opus-4-6"

Keep ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set to an empty string. That prevents Claude Code from authenticating directly with Anthropic and keeps requests on the Arena API path.

3. Start using Conductor

Create or restart a Conductor agent after saving the environment variables. Claude Code will pick up the gateway root URL and send its Anthropic-compatible requests through the Arena API.

4. Verify the gateway connection

Before debugging Conductor itself, confirm your key reaches the gateway and a Claude model responds end-to-end.

curl https://api.preview.arena.ai/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "x-api-key: <your-arena-key>" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "max_tokens": 64,
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in exactly five words"}
    ]
  }'

A successful response is an Anthropic-shaped envelope with "type": "message" and a content array.

Tips

  • Use ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL with the gateway root URL, not a /v1 suffix. Claude Code appends /v1/messages itself.
  • ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL pins Conductor agents to Arena-supported Claude model IDs.
  • Usage and spend for Conductor agents show up in the dashboard the same as other Arena API requests.
Arena API — Dashboard