Cognition

Overview

Property	Details
Description	Cognition serves its SWE coding models over an OpenAI-compatible API
Provider Route on LiteLLM	cognition/
Link to Provider Doc	Cognition Documentation
Default Base URL	https://api.cognition.ai/v1
Supported Operations	/chat/completions, /messages through LiteLLM's Anthropic Messages adapter

Cognition is its own provider on LiteLLM rather than a generic OpenAI-compatible route, so its spend is priced from the Cognition cost map entries and reported under cognition instead of being pooled with OpenAI traffic

API Key

Environment Variables

import os

os.environ["COGNITION_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key"
os.environ["COGNITION_API_BASE"] = "https://api.cognition.ai/v1"  # optional override

Models

Model	Input / 1M tokens	Output / 1M tokens	Cache read / 1M tokens
cognition/swe-1.7	$0.50	$2.50	$0.20
cognition/swe-1.7-lightning	$2.50	$12.50	$1.00
cognition/swe-1.6	$0.50	$2.50	$0.20

Pricing follows the Cognition model list. swe-1.7 is the standard tier; swe-1.7-lightning is the Cerebras-served tier that answers at about 1000 tokens a second and costs 5x. If your contract prices differ, set input_cost_per_token / output_cost_per_token on the deployment and those override the cost map

Usage - LiteLLM Python SDK

Chat Completions

Cognition Chat Completion

import os
from litellm import completion

os.environ["COGNITION_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key"

response = completion(
    model="cognition/swe-1.7",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write a python function that reverses a string"}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Streaming

Cognition Streaming Chat Completion

import os
from litellm import completion

os.environ["COGNITION_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key"

response = completion(
    model="cognition/swe-1.7",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain a binary search in two sentences"}],
    stream=True,
)

for chunk in response:
    print(chunk)

Tool Calling

Cognition Tool Calling

import os
from litellm import completion

os.environ["COGNITION_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key"

tools = [
    {
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
            "name": "run_tests",
            "description": "Run the test suite for a package",
            "parameters": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {"package": {"type": "string", "description": "Package name"}},
                "required": ["package"],
            },
        },
    }
]

response = completion(
    model="cognition/swe-1.7",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Run the tests for the billing package"}],
    tools=tools,
    tool_choice="auto",
)

print(response.choices[0].message.tool_calls)

Usage - LiteLLM Proxy

Add Cognition to your LiteLLM Proxy configuration:

config.yaml

model_list:
  - model_name: swe-1.7
    litellm_params:
      model: cognition/swe-1.7
      api_key: os.environ/COGNITION_API_KEY

general_settings:
  master_key: os.environ/LITELLM_MASTER_KEY

Start the proxy:

Start LiteLLM Proxy

export COGNITION_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export LITELLM_MASTER_KEY="sk-local-cognition"
litellm --config config.yaml --port 4000

# RUNNING on http://0.0.0.0:4000

OpenAI SDK

Cognition via Proxy - OpenAI SDK

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="http://localhost:4000",
    api_key="sk-local-cognition",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="swe-1.7",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "hello from litellm"}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

cURL

Cognition via Proxy - cURL

curl http://localhost:4000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LITELLM_MASTER_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "swe-1.7",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "hello from litellm"}]
  }'

You can also add Cognition from the Admin UI. Go to Models, then Add Model, pick Cognition as the provider, choose one of the cognition/ models, and paste your key

Anthropic Messages Compatibility

LiteLLM translates Anthropic Messages-shaped requests into Cognition chat completions, both through the SDK facade and the proxy's /v1/messages endpoint:

Anthropic Messages through LiteLLM Proxy

curl http://localhost:4000/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LITELLM_MASTER_KEY" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -d '{
    "model": "swe-1.7",
    "max_tokens": 128,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "hello from litellm"}]
  }'

Cost Tracking

The cognition/ models are registered in LiteLLM's model cost map, so per-request spend is computed automatically, returned in the x-litellm-response-cost response header, and recorded in spend logs under provider cognition. Discounts and reports configured for OpenAI do not apply to this traffic

Custom Endpoints

Cognition provisions API endpoints per customer today, so most deployments should set COGNITION_API_BASE or pass api_base explicitly with the base URL from your Cognition onboarding. https://api.cognition.ai/v1 is the conventional default used when neither is set. The cognition/ route keeps the provider identity and pricing either way

config.yaml

model_list:
  - model_name: swe-1.7
    litellm_params:
      model: cognition/swe-1.7
      api_base: https://your-cognition-endpoint/v1
      api_key: os.environ/COGNITION_API_KEY