Direct Anthropic

Some users go straight to Anthropic. They can still receive releases, rings and pinned versions; traffic-axis experiments need a gateway in the path.

Two cases

Case	Config delivery	Traffic experiments
Direct, no gateway	Files, MDM or dev container (same as the Bedrock path)	Not possible (nothing to rewrite the route)
Direct upstream behind halo-proxy or Kong	Same, with upstreams.anthropic	Yes

Note

Whether Claude Code fetches server-managed settings with a first-party login is a vendor feature outside Halos. Halos’s file-based delivery works regardless and is what the docs assume.

Gateway with an Anthropic upstream

apiVersion: halos.dev/v1
kind: Gateway
name: acme-direct
baseURL: https://ai.acme.example
protocols: {claude-code: anthropic-messages}
auth: {helperCommand: acme-sso-token --audience halos-gateway, ttlSeconds: 900}
models:
  sonnet: {upstream: anthropic, model: claude-sonnet-5-5}
upstreams:
  anthropic: {url: https://api.anthropic.com, kind: anthropic}

The provider key is injected by halo-proxy, not distributed to developers:

halo-proxy.yaml

upstreamHeaders:
  anthropic: {x-api-key: "${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}", anthropic-version: "2023-06-01"}

Model ids are examples. Mixing upstreams is fine: alias sonnet can go to orchestrator (Bedrock) for one ring and anthropic for another via an experiment’s routes. The Anthropic upstream is the path the deploy/compose mock (anthropic-mock) stands in for; a live Anthropic API account was not used.

Client-only management

With no gateway you still get version pins (requiredMinimumVersion/requiredMaximumVersion), model allowlists, MCP and hook locks, and permissions. You lose verified cohort stamping, traffic experiments and shadow.