Credential
Where a user's key should be sent, and what the service built from it should say about itself.
A value rather than a service: the application states which endpoint speaks for a provider, and the platform builds the client, so nothing here names a type from com.embabel.agent.spi. That is the point - CredentialLlmServiceFactory is the other way round, and requires a package the documentation asks application code not to depend on.
The case is the wire protocol, because that is what decides which client can talk to the endpoint. Everything that varies within a protocol is a field.
Adding a provider therefore does not mean adding a case, and cannot: the interface is sealed, so only this module can. Nearly every provider speaks one of the protocols below, and reaching it is a CredentialEndpointResolver returning OpenAiCompatible or Anthropic with your base URL - no framework change, no new type.
A case earns its place only when a protocol needs a client this framework does not have, and whoever adds one has to add that client too. Sealed so that the two stay together: an open hierarchy would let an application define a case nothing here can build, and it would fail at runtime with a key already in hand. Until such a protocol is shipped, reach it by registering a CredentialLlmServiceFactory and building the service yourself, accepting the SPI dependency that carries.
Inheritors
Types
Anthropic's own protocol, for Anthropic and anything fronting it.
The OpenAI wire protocol, which most providers now speak: OpenAI itself, DeepSeek, Mistral, Gemini and Atlas Cloud all reach the platform this way, as does the average self-hosted gateway.
Properties
Null unless you know it for the model the role named. The name comes from configuration and may be one this framework version has never heard of, so a cutoff stated here would be a guess, and it reaches the LLM as a prompt contribution.
Defaults to PricingModel.ALL_YOU_CAN_EAT - zero - because a BYOK call is billed to the user's own key rather than to the deployment, so charging it to the deployment's cost accounting would be wrong in the one direction that matters. Set it only if you are reselling the call and do want it counted.