Claude Code, Open Code, Cursor CLI, more and more agent teams are making AI coding tools their primary workspace instead of just calling APIs from scattered scripts. The problem is that most of these tools are built around one specific protocol. So the moment a team wants to switch model providers, say, from OpenAI to Claude, to test quality or cut costs, what should be a one-line config change turns into a full round of code surgery.

AgentBase's AI Coding Layer exists to close exactly that gap: it supports the OpenAI protocol and the Claude Messages protocol side by side on the same runtime, so whichever tool you're already using connects directly, with no need to rewrite logic that was already working fine.

The Real Cost of Switching Providers

Teams built around the OpenAI protocol who want to try Claude for a new use case typically have to touch three specific places in their codebase:

Tool-calling schema: OpenAI defines tools in a tools array with a function field (name, parameters as JSON Schema). Claude Messages uses input_schema instead, and returns calls as a tool_use block nested inside content rather than a separate tool-call field.
Streaming: OpenAI streams each chunk through a simple delta.content field. Claude Messages streams a sequence of distinct events — message_start, content_block_delta, message_delta, message_stop — which means writing a new state machine just to reassemble the text in the right order.
Response parsing: OpenAI returns text at choices[0].message.content, a string you can read straight off. Claude returns content as an array of blocks (text, tool_use, and so on) — you have to walk the array and handle each block type before you even get to the text.

Individually, none of these look like much. Stacked together, they're an entire adapter layer you now have to write and maintain — and every time either provider updates its API, you're back in there fixing it. This is the exact problem GreenNode's own builders ran into while testing different models for internal agents, and it's the reason the AI Coding Layer exists.

AgentBase solves this at the infrastructure layer, not in your code.

What the AI Coding Layer Actually Does

AgentBase's AI Coding Layer supports the two most widely used protocols today, side by side: the OpenAI protocol and the Claude Messages protocol. The AI coding tools you already know — Claude Code, Open Code, or anything else compatible with either standard — connect directly to AgentBase with no translation layer in between.

In practice, that means your existing codebase doesn't have to change. Teams on Claude Code keep using Claude Code. Teams on the OpenAI SDK keep using the OpenAI SDK. Both run on the same runtime, under the same governance layer underneath.

A Real Example: Switching Providers by Changing One `base_url`

One example from GreenNode's own engineering team shows exactly what "no lock-in" looks like at the code level. An internal knowledge agent — a wiki agent used to look up internal docs around the clock — was built on LangChain using langchain_openai.ChatOpenAI to call models through the AgentBase AI Platform. Because the endpoint is OpenAI-compatible, the only change needed to swap models is the base_url — no rewriting the tool schema, no reworking the streaming logic, none of the response-parsing headaches described above.

That same agent later got called by other agents as an ordinary LangChain tool, which means it drops into any framework as long as the tool exposes the right interface. That's the whole point of AgentBase: you build with the framework you already know, and AgentBase handles the infrastructure and protocol compatibility underneath.

For teams on LangGraph, AgentBase ships greennode-agent-bridge[langgraph] out of the box, so you get short-term and long-term memory integration without writing a checkpointer from scratch.

One More Model Choice: Minimax m2.5 Is Coming

Not every task needs the strongest model available. AgentBase is adding Minimax m2.5 soon, giving you another option for cost-sensitive workloads — running alongside your existing models, with no change to how you integrate them.

Governance Runs in the Background, Not in Your Way

One builder put it best: "I deploy the same way I always have — governance just runs behind the scenes, with no new steps added to my workflow." That's exactly what the AI Coding Layer is designed for: no extra abstraction, no new API to learn, no pressure to touch code that already works. Governance — MCP Policy, Access Control, usage tracking — keeps running underneath. You just don't have to think about it every time you deploy.

On the deployment side specifically, AgentBase also ships a dedicated CLI skillset (agentbase-deploy) that runs inside Claude Code. As one internal example, the team behind Mee Agent — GreenNode's meeting-notes agent — used this skill to build, push, and deploy in a single command, with no manual step-by-step typing required. That's a separate layer of convenience from the AI Coding Layer described above, but worth knowing about.

People also read: Autonomous AI Agent Control: Governed Autonomy on AgentBase

The Takeaway

Vendor lock-in in AI coding rarely comes from picking the wrong model. It comes from a codebase getting welded to one protocol — different tool schemas, different streaming formats, different response parsing. That's the lesson GreenNode's own team learned after deploying internal agents like the wiki agent, and it's exactly why the AI Coding Layer is built the way it is: one runtime, one governance layer, but you keep using Claude Code, Open Code, or whatever tool your team already knows. When it's time to switch models or providers, that's a config change — not a rewrite.

Build Your First Agent on AgentBase

AgentBase is generally available now — ready for real agents in production, not a limited trial. Beyond the AI Coding Layer, the platform also includes:

MCP Gateway & MCP Policy — centralized management and control over MCP connections, aligned with enterprise security requirements.
Private VPC & Container Registry — deploy Agent Runtime inside your own internal network, so data never leaves your system.
Budget Alert & Usage/Cost — track spend by team and get alerted before you hit budget limits.
Unified Agent Runtime — Runtime and OpenClaw merged into one place to stop, start, and run your agents.

No codebase changes, no new API to learn — just point the AI coding tool you already use at AgentBase and start deploying. Sign up for AgentBase today to build your first agent, or book a demo with GreenNode's technical team to talk through the architecture that fits your existing stack.

AgentBase AI Coding Layer: No Lock-in for Agent Builders