SkillOpt

OpenAI-compatible endpoints for SkillOpt-Sleep (DeepSeek, local vLLM, …)

This document describes the azure_openai backend in skillopt_sleep/backend.py, which can drive servers that implement the expected OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions request shape — for example DeepSeek’s hosted API or a self-hosted vLLM/Ollama server — in addition to native Azure OpenAI deployments. The included runner is a sanitized unattended-launch example that was originally used alongside Antigravity; it is not an Antigravity transcript integration.

Version requirement. This capability landed after v0.2.0. Until the next release, install SkillOpt from the latest main; the current PyPI 0.2.0 package does not provide this compatible-endpoint path.

What changed

All changes are backward-compatible — the default managed-identity Azure path is unchanged:

1. CLI acceptance. skillopt-sleep run --backend azure_openai is now an accepted choice in skillopt_sleep/__main__.py (it was previously rejected by argparse even though get_backend() understood the name).

2. Endpoint resolution honors AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT. AzureOpenAIBackend.__init__ resolves the endpoint as explicit arg → AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT env → the built-in _AZURE_ENDPOINTS table. Previously a non-Azure endpoint could not be supplied at all.

3. openai_compatible auth mode. When AZURE_OPENAI_AUTH_MODE=openai_compatible (also accepts compat/openai), _get_client() builds a plain openai.OpenAI(base_url=…) client with AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY instead of an AzureOpenAI client. This mirrors the auth mode already supported by the sibling skillopt/model/azure_openai.py module. (The AzureOpenAI client rewrites request URLs with Azure-only ?api-version=… query params and deployment path segments, which non-Azure servers reject with 404 Resource not found — the sleep cycle then scores every rollout 0.0 with no diagnostic.)

4. Managed-identity credential guard. The managed-identity path attaches an Azure AD bearer token to every request. It therefore accepts only an HTTPS endpoint whose hostname ends in *.openai.azure.com or *.cognitiveservices.azure.com. An HTTP endpoint — even one with an Azure-looking hostname — and any host outside those suffixes are rejected before a credential-bearing client is created.

5. Provider-neutral request shape. In compat mode the backend sends only the standard OpenAI-compatible contract (model, messages, max_tokens). Provider-specific request fields are opt-in via environment variables (below) and are attached only in compat mode — nothing is inferred from model-name substrings, and the native Azure request remains unchanged.

6. Reliable error state. _call() records the last exception in self.last_call_error (surfaced in diagnostics.json), clears it when a retry recovers, and sets an explicit "empty response on all N attempts" diagnostic when every attempt returns empty text.

Configuration reference

SkillOpt-Sleep’s azure_openai backend reads these environment variables (unprefixed only — the OPTIMIZER_*/TARGET_* dual-role variables belong to the separate skillopt.model.azure_openai module and are not used by the sleep cycle):

Variable	Meaning
AZURE_OPENAI_AUTH_MODE	openai_compatible (or compat/openai) selects the plain OpenAI client. Unset/other = Azure managed identity (default).
AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT	Base URL of the server, e.g. https://api.deepseek.com. Azure managed identity requires HTTPS plus an approved Azure hostname.
AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY	API key sent by the compat client to the configured base URL.
SKILLOPT_SLEEP_COMPAT_MAX_TOKENS	Optional int (default 8192): max_tokens sent in compat mode.
SKILLOPT_SLEEP_CHAT_EXTRA_BODY	Optional JSON object passed as extra_body for provider-specific fields in compat mode only. It is ignored in native Azure mode.

Data and transport boundaries

• Harvesting reads local transcripts without modifying them, and the mock backend makes no provider calls. A real backend sends truncated transcript excerpts and derived task content to the selected provider for mining, replay, judging, and reflection.
• Outbound prompts are not currently guaranteed to be free of secrets. Review the provider’s data policy and avoid a third-party endpoint for sensitive transcripts unless you have first inspected and redacted the task material. One reviewable path is skillopt-sleep harvest --output tasks.json, followed by a reviewed --tasks-file run.
• Use HTTPS for every remote compatible provider. Plain HTTP is appropriate only for an explicitly trusted loopback development server such as http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1; the compat client sends its API key to the configured URL.
• Azure managed-identity credentials have the stricter invariant described above: HTTPS and an approved Azure hostname are both mandatory.

How to use it

export AZURE_OPENAI_AUTH_MODE=openai_compatible
export AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT=https://api.deepseek.com   # DeepSeek base URL
export AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...                       # your provider key

# DeepSeek reasoning models: enable the thinking channel (opt-in, not inferred)
export SKILLOPT_SLEEP_CHAT_EXTRA_BODY='{"thinking": {"type": "enabled"}}'
export SKILLOPT_SLEEP_COMPAT_MAX_TOKENS=8192

skillopt-sleep run \
  --backend azure_openai \
  --model deepseek-v4-pro \
  --project /path/to/your/project

The same pattern works for a server that implements this Chat Completions contract: point AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT at the provider-specific base URL, set a matching --model, and omit SKILLOPT_SLEEP_CHAT_EXTRA_BODY unless the provider needs extra request fields. Self-hosted vLLM and Ollama commonly use a /v1 base path, for example http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1 or http://127.0.0.1:11434/v1.

--project selects the project/transcript scope and the project CLAUDE.md; it does not by itself select an arbitrary project SKILL.md. Pass --target-skill-path path/to/SKILL.md when a specific skill is the optimization target. Without that flag, SkillOpt-Sleep uses its configured managed skill.

Unattended runner example (originally used with Antigravity)

The examples/ directory contains a sanitized reference for running the compatible backend unattended:

• examples/runner.py — a thin launcher that loads a provider key from an .env file, exports the variables above, invokes skillopt-sleep run with the DeepSeek backend, and exits with the child’s return code so supervisors see failures as failures. Its session-end action writes a small local rollout-evidence event as an example hook target.
• examples/watchdog.py — a minimal supervisor loop that invokes the runner on a fixed interval (e.g. every 4 hours) and logs non-zero exits as failures. On Windows this is registered as a Scheduled Task so it survives logout; on Linux/macOS a systemd timer or cron entry serves the same role.

The current engine does not read brain/rollout-evidence.jsonl, and it does not harvest Antigravity transcripts. That hook output is illustrative metadata, not additional training evidence. A real run must use a supported Claude Code/Codex transcript source or a reviewed task file converted by the operator.

Contributor-reported validation

The contributor reported the following results from a private Windows 11 setup driving the cycle against deepseek-v4-pro in openai_compatible mode. They are useful integration evidence, but the private session set is not a reproducible benchmark bundled with this repository:

• A direct backend smoke test returns a live completion (no 404, last_call_error empty, client type OpenAI).
• A full nightly cycle using the configured session source moved the held-out validation gate from 0.250 → 1.000, accepting a DeepSeek-authored skill edit (accept_new_best). diagnostics.json for that night reports "backend": "azure_openai" with a non-empty token count and an empty call_error — i.e. a genuine optimization night, versus the prior all-0.0 nights that the endpoint bug produced.
• A subsequent unattended night triggered by the watchdog completed the full chain (watchdog → runner → skillopt-sleep → DeepSeek) and the gate correctly rejected a non-improving proposal (0.3 → 0.3), confirming the validation gate behaves normally on the new backend.

Deterministic no-network coverage for the new behavior lives in tests/test_azure_openai_compat.py (CLI acceptance, client selection, endpoint/auth guard, request kwargs, retry error-state, empty-response diagnostics, and runner exit-code propagation).

Unsupported Gemini proxy branch in the example

examples/runner.py still contains an illustrative branch that routes the claude CLI backend through a loopback Anthropic-compatible proxy such as LiteLLM. It is not a native Gemini backend, has no validated model mapping in this example, and is not part of the supported path documented here. The sample currently enters that branch whenever no DeepSeek key is found, so a production adaptation should remove it or replace it with an explicit opt-in, a separately configured model, and a trusted isolated loopback proxy. Do not treat this branch as tested Gemini support.

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