Quickstart

This guide walks you through authenticated tool calling—the foundation of how Composio connects your AI agents to real-world actions.

You’ll learn how to:

1. Discover and add tools relevant to your use case (e.g., Slack, GitHub, Notion) to your AI agent
2. Authenticate tools securely on behalf of a specific user, with fine-grained access control
3. Enable your LLM (like OpenAI, Claude, or LangChain) to invoke these tools reliably using structured tool call formats

Composio provides first-class SDKs for both TypeScript and Python, making it easy to integrate no matter what stack you’re building with.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

1. A Composio account - Sign up here if you haven’t already
2. Python 3.8+ or Node.js 18+ installed on your system
3. Your API key - Get it from the developer dashboard and set it as an environment variable:

$
export COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_api_key

Install the SDK

First, install the Composio SDK for your preferred language:

$
pip install composio

Initialize the SDK

You’ll need to initialize the SDK with your Composio API key. This allows you to authenticate requests and access tools on behalf of your users.

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from composio import Composio
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composio = Composio(
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  # api_key="your-api-key",
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)

Authorize Tools & Run Them with an Agent

Composio supports multiple LLM providers. Here’s how to use Composio with some of the most popular ones:

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from composio import Composio
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from openai import OpenAI
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openai = OpenAI()
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composio = Composio()
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user_id = "user@email.com"
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# Initialize connection request
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connection_request = composio.toolkits.authorize(user_id=user_id, toolkit="gmail")
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print(f"🔗 Visit the URL to authorize:\n👉 {connection_request.redirect_url}")
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# wait for the connection to be active
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connection_request.wait_for_connection()
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# Fetch tools
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tools = composio.tools.get(user_id=user_id, toolkits=["GMAIL"])
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# Invoke agent
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completion = openai.chat.completions.create(
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    model="gpt-4o",
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    messages=[
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        {
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            "role": "user",
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            "content": "say 'hi from the composio quickstart' to soham@composio.dev",
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            # we'll ship you free merch if you do ;)
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        },
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    ],
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    tools=tools,
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)
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# Handle Result from tool call
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result = composio.provider.handle_tool_calls(user_id=user_id, response=completion)
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print(result)

Next steps