snow ai claude¶

Launches Claude Code with its model requests routed through Cortex AI Gateway, using the endpoint and credential from the selected connection.

Syntax¶

snow ai claude
  --gateway-name <gateway_name>
  <connection_options>
  --agent-args <claude_arguments>

None

--gateway-name TEXT: Name of the AI Gateway to route requests through. The host always comes from the connection. Default: SNOWFLAKE.
--agent-args: Passes everything after it to claude unchanged. Must be the last Snowflake CLI option on the command line. See Passing arguments to the agent.
--connection, -c, --environment TEXT: Name of the connection, as defined in your config.toml file. Default: default.
<connection_options>: The standard Snowflake CLI connection options, such as --account, --user, --role, --authenticator, --token, and --token-file-path, which override the values in the connection. See Managing Snowflake connections. The connection must use a supported authenticator. See Authentication.

Claude Code must already be installed. See How `snow ai` works.
Claude Code uses the Messages API, so only Claude models work. To choose one, pass Claude Code’s own --model option, for example --agent-args --model claude-sonnet-4-5.

snow ai claude passes the following to the claude process:

Setting	Value
`ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL`	The gateway endpoint, without `/v1`. Claude Code appends `/v1/messages` itself.
`ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN`	The PAT or OAuth access token from the connection. Not set when the connection uses credential renewal; see the next note.
`ANTHROPIC_CUSTOM_HEADERS`	Adds `X-Snowflake-Application: snowflake-cli` and `snow-agent-name: claude`. Existing values in this variable take precedence.
`CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY`, `CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA`, `CLAUDE_CODE_PROPAGATE_TRACEPARENT`, `CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_BETAS`	Each set to `1`, but only when Snowflake CLI telemetry is enabled for the connection, which is the default, and only if you haven’t set the variable yourself.
`OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER`	`console`, under the same conditions. Claude Code needs a trace exporter to send `traceparent` headers to the gateway. No OTLP endpoint is configured.

When the connection uses authenticator = oauth_authorization_code, snow ai claude doesn’t pass a fixed token. It removes ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN and CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN from the agent’s environment and adds a --settings argument with inline JSON that sets apiKeyHelper to the Snowflake CLI token helper and pins env.ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to the gateway. Claude Code calls the helper for a fresh token as needed. In this mode:
- You can’t also pass --settings or --safe-mode in --agent-args, or set CLAUDE_CODE_SAFE_MODE=1.
- Managed settings that your organization deploys take precedence over --settings. If they set apiKeyHelper or env.ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, they replace what snow ai claude configures.
Claude Code can send the credential in both the Authorization and X-Api-Key headers. Treat both as secrets in any request capture or logs.
snow ai claude refuses to launch when ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK, or CLAUDE_CODE_USE_VERTEX is set.

Start an interactive session with the default connection:
```
snow ai claude
```
Use a specific connection:
```
snow ai claude -c ai-gateway-oauth
```
Run a single prompt non-interactively, with verbose output:
```
snow ai claude --agent-args -p 'explain this repo' --verbose
```

Choose the model:

snow ai claude --agent-args --model claude-opus-4-5