Your agents have expensive taste.

Connect your agents to Phantom AI. Route models, control spending and pay from your terminal.

Phantom CLI (phantom) by Phantom AI · Docs · npm

Use Phantom AI's router to send requests to cheaper models when your rules allow it, or choose a model yourself. Connect the coding agents you already use, fund their inference and control spending—all from your terminal.

Install the agent skill

The phantom-ai skill ships in the package. phantom setup installs it for each agent it finds:

npm i -g @phantomcodes/cli
phantom setup --agent claude

The skill covers workspace setup, funding, spending controls and model routing. Skill docs

Let your agent set it up

Copy this into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent with terminal access:

Help me set up phantom for AI inference through Phantom AI.

Check that I have Node 24 or newer, then install @phantomcodes/cli if needed.
Run phantom setup --agent <my agent> to install the phantom-ai skill, and read it.
Check for an existing workspace and saved keys before changing anything.
If I need to connect, start phantom login and let me complete the device approval.
Check the workspace balance. Ask which coding agent I use and what budget I want,
then create a named workspace key with that cap.
Ask whether I want to connect my existing agent for future runs or use a temporary
connection for one run. For saved setup, preview the changes with phantom setup --dry-run
and show them to me before applying the setup I approve. Make sure any spending cap
is on the key my agent will actually use. Ask before adding funds or starting paid
inference. Keep keys and recovery credentials out of chat. Finish with the command
to launch my agent, and explain how to undo any saved setup.

Connect your existing agents

Keep using your coding agent, with Phantom AI handling its inference and model routing. Connect it using your saved key:

npm i -g @phantomcodes/cli
phantom login
phantom setup

Used pai, this CLI's old name? Run phantom setup once after you install. Until then, Claude Code and the shell block pai set up still call pai, and phantom prints a reminder.

The Phantom CLI detects supported agents, previews the configuration changes, then asks before applying them. It connects their model calls to Phantom AI and wires up the saved key. Restart your agent, or open a new terminal, to use the connection.

Codex, Claude Code, opencode, Continue, Goose, Aider, GitHub Copilot CLI and Cline support saved setup. Cursor gets instructions for its settings screen; pi gets the agent skill. Agent-specific setup.

Preview without changing files with phantom setup --dry-run. The Phantom CLI keeps backups; undo the changes with phantom setup --restore.

Connect for one run

npm i -g @phantomcodes/cli
phantom login
phantom workspace fund --amount 10 --card
phantom workspace status
phantom codex

Both setup options require Node 24+ and your coding agent installed. Connect, fund your workspace, then launch Codex (phantom codex), Claude Code (phantom claude), pi (phantom pi), or any other compatible agent. Set up other agents.

Login opens a device approval page and saves a key privately. Funding opens checkout; check your workspace balance after payment. Agent runs use temporary configuration and print spending afterward. Your existing agent configuration stays in place.

Already have a Phantom key? Use phantom login --paste to save it locally.

Fund your workspace

Add credit first, then let your agents spend from the shared balance:

phantom fund --amount 10 --card
phantom fund --amount 10 --coin usdc

Credit is available after the payment is verified. Check balance anytime with phantom balance.

Funding and payment details.

Give each agent a budget

Create a key with its own cap, sharing your workspace balance:

phantom keys create --save coding --limit 5
phantom claude --key coding
phantom keys list
phantom keys set --id <key-id> --limit 10

Workspace key controls include total limits, periodic budgets and spending rates. Use the full key ID from phantom keys list when changing or revoking a key. Revoking a workspace key preserves workspace funds.

Choose what answers

Let the router choose a model for auto requests. Your policy can prefer cheaper models and change the choice for tool use, reasoning or spending limits:

PHANTOM_KEY_NAME=coding phantom route set --models <model-a>,<model-b>
PHANTOM_KEY_NAME=coding phantom route test --table

Prefer a specific model? Select it in your agent. Policies that apply only to auto leave explicit model choices alone. Routing covers conditions, fallback and conversation affinity.

phantom-1 picks a tier for each request: economy, standard or frontier. Your key's lineup picks the model in each tier, and a fallback model to try when it fails:

phantom lineup --table
phantom lineup set --frontier <model> --economy-fallback <model>
phantom lineup reset

lineup shows the choices for each tier. default in place of a model puts that tier back to its default.

See what a key spent, and what phantom-1 saved against always running its frontier model:

phantom spend --table
phantom spend --from 2026-09-01 --to 2026-09-30
phantom spend --workspace --table

The dates are UTC days and the default is this month. --workspace lists every key in your workspace by name; without it you see the key you run as. The saving is an estimate: the same tokens at the frontier model's price today.

A Pro ($20 a month) or Max ($100 a month) plan pays for phantom-1 calls up to an amount of model cost in any 7 days, then your credit pays:

phantom plan --table
phantom plan pro
phantom plan manage

plan shows the key's plan and how much of the last 7 days it has paid for. plan pro and plan max print a Stripe Checkout link that puts the plan on this key and open it. plan manage opens Stripe's billing page, where the card changes, the plan switches and it cancels. A named model, not phantom-1, still spends credit.

Commands

Put phantom flags before agent arguments; use -- to separate them:

phantom codex --key coding -- exec "explain this repository"

Commands print JSON; --table renders supported results for people. Agent commands inherit the terminal and print a spending summary on stderr. Exit codes: 0 success, 1 error, 2 rejected key; agent runs return the agent's exit code.

npm ci
npm run typecheck
npm run build
npm run coverage
npm run docs
node scripts/gen-docs.mjs --check

phantom is proprietary, under the Phantom Proprietary License. It lets you install and run phantom to use Phantom AI, the hosted API it calls.