Integrate GLM-4.5 with Claude Code

8/11/2025

So, you've been hearing the buzz about Z.ai's new powerhouse model, GLM-4.5, & you're probably also a fan of Anthropic's slick in-terminal coding assistant, Claude Code. What if I told you that you can combine these two for a seriously upgraded coding experience? Well, you absolutely can, & it's not even that complicated. Turns out, GLM-4.5 was pretty much designed to be plugged into agentic tools like Claude Code.

Honestly, this is one of those "best of both worlds" situations. You get the slick, in-terminal, whole-codebase-aware experience of Claude Code, but powered by the massive reasoning & coding capabilities of GLM-4.5. It's like dropping a new engine into your favorite car.

I've been digging into this quite a bit, & I've found a few different ways to make this happen. We'll walk through them step-by-step, from the super simple to the more advanced. Let's get into it.

First, a Quick Lowdown: Why This Combo is a Big Deal

Before we get our hands dirty, let's just quickly appreciate why this is so cool.

GLM-4.5: This isn't just another LLM. It's a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with a massive 355 billion parameters. It's been specifically optimized for agentic tasks, coding, & complex reasoning. One of its standout features is a "thinking mode" that it can toggle for more complex problems, which is perfect for a coding assistant. Plus, it's released under a permissive MIT license, which is a huge win for the open-source community.
Claude Code: This thing is a joy to use if you live in your terminal. It's not just a chatbot in a different window; it directly interacts with your codebase, can edit files, run commands, & even handle Git operations. It's built to be an agentic tool, meaning it can take a high-level command & figure out the steps to get it done.

The official GLM-4.5 documentation actually mentions that it can be seamlessly combined with Claude Code. That's a pretty strong green light. So, let's look at how you can actually do it.

Method 1: The Straight-Up Swap (Using Environment Variables)

This is by far the most direct & simple way to get started. The basic idea is to tell Claude Code to send its API requests to the GLM-4.5 API endpoint instead of Anthropic's. You do this by setting a couple of environment variables in your terminal.

This method essentially tricks Claude Code into using a different "brain." It's surprisingly effective.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Get Your GLM-4.5 API Key

First things first, you need an API key.

Head over to the Z.ai website. You'll probably need to sign up for an account.
Navigate to the API Keys section in your account dashboard.
Create a new API key & give it a memorable name (like "claude-code-integration").
Copy this key somewhere safe. You'll need it in a second.

Step 2: Set the Environment Variables

Now, open up your terminal. Before you run Claude Code, you'll need to export two environment variables. These variables will tell Claude Code where to send its requests & what credentials to use.

For macOS or Linux, you'll use the

export

command: