How to handle multi-provider agents using the OpenAI Agents SDK?

All answers to this question.

It is absolutely true. While it's obviously optimized for OpenAI's Responses API, the OpenAI Agents SDK includes an "Any-LLM" provider and a LiteLLM adapter. We are currently running a setup where our high-level planning is handled by GPT-4o, but we hand off to a local Llama 3 model for data cleaning tasks to save on costs. The "handoff" logic remains identical; you just specify a different provider in the agent's configuration. This flexibility is what finally convinced our CTO to move away from LangChain—we get the simplicity of a native-feeling SDK without being strictly locked into one provider if prices or performance change.

   Answered 2025-12-10 by Kimberly Foster

Does the OpenAI Agents SDK support structured outputs (JSON mode) when using these other providers? I've found that some adapters lose the schema validation when you switch away from the native OpenAI models.

   Answered 2025-12-15 by Peter Parker

• It depends on the model. If you’re using Claude via the adapter, it uses Claude's native tool-calling features, which are very reliable. The SDK tries to map its internal Pydantic schemas to whatever format the target provider expects. It works surprisingly well for most mainstream models that support function calling.

     Commented 2025-12-18 by Victor Stone

It makes hybrid-cloud AI a reality. You can keep your sensitive data on-prem with a local model and only hand off to OpenAI for the complex reasoning steps.

   Answered 2025-12-22 by Natalie Rushman

• That's the perfect use case. It allows for a tiered security model that most enterprise compliance teams will actually approve of.

     Commented 2025-12-28 by Diana Prince