RubyLLM 2.0: Providers, Protocols, and Provider Gems

RubyLLM 2.0 is almost ready. It isn’t out yet, but it will be soon, and I have been looking forward to showing you what is in it. There is a lot in this release. Too much for one enormous announcement, and most of it deserves more than a bullet point. So this is the first in a series of posts about what’s coming in RubyLLM 2.0. Let’s start with providers and protocols. In 2.0, OpenAI uses the Responses API by default. Providers and protocols are separate things. Four new providers bring the total to seventeen. And if the provider you need is still missing, a new generator gives you a complete provider gem to start from. RubyLLM.chat(model: 'gpt-5.4') # OpenAI Responses API RubyLLM.chat(model: 'gpt-5.4', protocol: :chat_completions) # same model, old API RubyLLM.chat(model: 'claude-opus-4-6', provider: :vertexai) # Vertex AI, Anthropic protocol A provider is not a protocol A provider is the service you connect to: OpenAI, Mistral, Vertex AI, or one of the others. It knows the host,…