Companions

Companions are small apps that talk to a running gateway. They hold no routing logic of their own. This page covers the desktop companion, the MCP server for Claude Code, and the VS Code and browser extensions.

Companion	How you get it
Desktop companion (Linux)	Release download. See Install
MCP server	Built into prism: the prism mcp command
VS Code extension	Build from the source code
Chrome and Firefox extension	Load from the source code

Desktop companion

DL Prism Desktop is a compact Linux window for running the gateway and your local models.

Start the gateway

1. Open DL Prism Desktop.

2. In the gateway card, select Start gateway. The companion runs prism serve and shows its output in a log pane.

3. When the gateway is reachable, the card shows its version, uptime, mode and address. Select Open Dashboard to open the web dashboard.

Stop stops a gateway the companion started. If the gateway was already running when the companion opened, the card says so and Stop is disabled: the companion never stops a process it did not start.

The full variant opens the dashboard in its own DL Prism Dashboard window. The engine variant, the AppImage and the Flatpak open it in your browser.

Usage and providers

• Usage this month shows spend against your budget, with a Budget exceeded highlight when it is spent.
• Gateway providers lists each provider with a local or cloud label, a health dot and its number of models.

Manage local models with Ollama

The Local models card works with an Ollama install on the same machine.

• It lists installed models with their size and marks models in memory as loaded.
• Run loads a model into memory; Stop unloads it.
• Delete removes a model from disk after you confirm.
• The Catalog offers ten suggested models with a Pull button each. Pull something else downloads any model by name, with a progress bar and Cancel.

If Ollama is not running, the card shows Install Ollama and Retry.

WARNING

Delete removes the model files from your disk. You can download the model again later, but large models take time and bandwidth.

Connect cloud providers

The Providers card has presets for 12 cloud services: Anthropic, OpenAI/Codex, Moonshot (Kimi), DeepSeek, Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Mistral, Groq, OpenRouter, Together AI, Alibaba DashScope (Qwen) and Z.ai (GLM).

1. Select a provider's chip. A dialog lists the models it adds.

2. Paste your API key and select Connect (or Replace for a provider that is already connected).

3. Restart the gateway when the companion asks. If it started the gateway, it offers a Restart button.

The companion writes the provider into prism.yaml (by default ~/.config/prism/prism.yaml) and keeps the rest of the file, including comments, unchanged. If the file does not exist, it creates one with a local ollama provider.

DANGER

The Providers card stores your API key in prism.yaml as plain text. The file is made readable only by your user, but anyone with access to your account, or a backup of the file, can read the key. To keep keys out of the file, add providers by hand with api_key_env instead. See Add providers and API keys.

Disconnect, on a connected chip, removes the provider from the file after you confirm. Model prices in the presets are a snapshot from August 2026.

Settings

Select the gear icon to change:

Setting	What it is
Gateway base URL	Where the gateway listens. Default http://127.0.0.1:8130
API key (optional)	Sent to the gateway if you set server.api_keys
prism binary path	The prism program to start. Default: found on your PATH
Config file path (optional)	Passed to prism serve -c
Ollama base URL	Where Ollama listens
Gateway config file (optional)	The prism.yaml the Providers card edits

Claude Code MCP server

prism mcp is an MCP server (Model Context Protocol, the way Claude Code adds tools). It lets Claude Code ask other models for help without leaving the session. It talks to the running gateway, so your rules, failover and budget still apply.

1. Start the gateway with prism serve.

2. Add Prism to Claude Code:

   claude mcp add dl-prism -- prism mcp

   If prism is not on your PATH, use its full path instead.

3. In Claude Code, the tools below are now available.

Tool	What it does
prism_chat	Sends a prompt to auto or a named model and returns the reply, with a line saying which model answered
prism_explain	Returns the routing decision for a prompt, without calling a model
prism_models	Lists your models
prism_usage	Shows this month's spend and budget

To share the setup with a project, check in an .mcp.json file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dl-prism": {
      "command": "prism",
      "args": ["mcp", "--gateway", "http://127.0.0.1:8130"],
      "env": { "PRISM_API_KEY": "" }
    }
  }
}

If the gateway is not running, a tool call returns an error saying so; the Claude Code session carries on. Codex CLI can use the same MCP server.

VS Code extension

The extension adds a DL Prism chat to the activity bar, a status bar item with the current model and month's spend, and these commands: DL Prism: Ask About Selection, DL Prism: Explain Routing, DL Prism: Switch Model and DL Prism: Open Dashboard.

It is not a release download. To build and install it you need Node.js and the source code:

git clone https://github.com/Dhiva-Labs/dl_prism.git
cd dl_prism/integrations/vscode
npm install
npm run package
code --install-extension dl-prism-0.1.0.vsix

Settings, under DL Prism in VS Code settings: dlPrism.baseUrl (default http://127.0.0.1:8130), dlPrism.apiKey (empty) and dlPrism.model (default auto). The API key setting is stored as plain text, so avoid syncing it.

Chrome and Firefox extension

A popup chat with a model picker, a right-click menu item, Ask DL Prism about your selected text, and an options page. It is loaded from the source code.

Chrome:

1. Get the source code with git clone https://github.com/Dhiva-Labs/dl_prism.git.

2. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode.

3. Select Load unpacked and choose the integrations/chrome folder.

4. Open the extension's options and set the gateway URL and API key if you use one.

Firefox: run node tool/build.mjs in integrations/chrome, open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, select Load Temporary Add-on… and choose dist/firefox/manifest.json. Accept the prompt to grant access to your local gateway. Temporary add-ons are removed when Firefox restarts.

The extension can only reach a gateway on 127.0.0.1 or localhost.

Next steps

• The web dashboard
• Connect your tools