Exercise 00: Setup & Connection Test¶

Objective¶

Verify your environment is configured correctly and can communicate with your chosen LLM provider.

Concepts Covered¶

Virtual environment setup
Environment variable configuration
Provider-agnostic client initialization
Context managers for HTTP client lifecycle

How It Works¶

This exercise validates the full connection path from your local machine to the LLM provider. The script uses the shared get_client() context manager from commons/llm_client.py, which reads environment variables and returns an OpenAI or AzureOpenAI client depending on your configuration.

sequenceDiagram
    participant Script as 01_test_connection.py
    participant Factory as get_client()
    participant Env as Environment Variables
    participant LLM as LLM Provider

    Script->>Factory: with get_client() as client
    Factory->>Env: Read OPENAI_API_KEY /<br/>AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT
    Env-->>Factory: Credentials + provider info
    Factory-->>Script: client (OpenAI or AzureOpenAI)

    Script->>LLM: chat.completions.create()<br/>system: "You are a helpful assistant"<br/>user: "Say hello..."
    LLM-->>Script: Greeting response

    Script->>Script: Log provider, model, response

Context sharing: None — this is a single request/response. No messages are accumulated or reused.

Structured output: Not used. The response is plain text.

Interactive Message Flow¶

You are a helpful assistant.

Say hello and confirm you are working. Keep it brief.

Hello! I'm working and ready to help. What can I do for you?

Files¶

01_test_connection.py — Tests your API connection and prints provider info

How to Run¶

python exercises/00_setup/01_test_connection.py

Expected Output¶

A greeting from the model confirming connectivity, along with provider and model details.

Next¶

→ Next: Exercise 01: LLM Basics