Setup

Connect Claude

Point Claude at https://bareminimum.tech with your key, and everything it sends passes through pseudonymization. No Claude subscription is needed: usage is billed to your budget.

1. Get your key

On the home page, choose Request access with Google and sign in.
Agree on your budget with a manager; they approve the request.
Sign in again: your account shows your key and these settings, filled in for you.

2a. Claude Desktop

Choose Help → Troubleshooting → Enable Developer Mode.
Choose Developer → Configure Third-Party Inference…
In Connection, choose the provider Gateway, the credential kind Static API key, the base URL https://bareminimum.tech, your key, and the auth scheme bearer.
Click Apply Changes, then Save & Restart, and choose the gateway configuration.

Signing out of Claude Desktop switches between the gateway and a Claude account, each with its own chats.

2b. Claude Code

Add to ~/.claude/settings.json, with your key in place of <your key>:

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://bareminimum.tech",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "<your key>",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_GATEWAY_MODEL_DISCOVERY": "1"
  }
}

3. Check it

Send a message naming someone, then follow verify it yourself to see the stand-in Anthropic received.

If Claude shows an error

Errors from the gateway start with bareminimum:; any other error is Anthropic's own.

The message says	What to do
unknown or missing key	Copy the key again from your account; making a new key retires the old one.
budget spent; retry in …	Wait until the time shown, or ask a manager for a larger budget.
… cannot be pseudonymized; remove it	The request holds something the gateway cannot read, such as an image, a PDF or an MCP server: remove it, or paste its text instead.
all … stand-ins are already in this conversation	The conversation uses up a set of stand-ins: start a new one.
requests already in flight	Wait for one of your replies to finish.