Authenticate
Cogo speaks Gemini through one of two auth paths. Pick whichever matches the credentials you have.
Option A — Public Gemini API
Best for personal use and quick experiments.
- Get an API key from Google AI Studio.
- Export it:
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=...That’s it. Cogo will detect the key on startup and use the public Gemini endpoints.
Option B — Vertex AI
Best for org-managed projects, longer context windows, and tighter audit trails. Requires a GCP project with the Vertex AI API enabled.
- Authenticate with
gcloud:
gcloud auth application-default login- Tell Cogo to use Vertex:
export GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_VERTEXAI=true
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=your-project
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION=us-central1 # or "global"The same Application Default Credentials (ADC) flow that other GCP tooling uses.
Verify
cogo -p "ping"
# pongIf you see an error, double-check that exactly one auth path is configured (e.g. don’t have both GOOGLE_API_KEY and GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_VERTEXAI set).
A copy-pasteable template
The repo ships an .env.example you can drop in as a starting point — copy it to .env, edit the values, and source .env before running.
Next
→ First Prompt — run a turn.