User Guide

These guides are for people who call commands, whether through from openbb import obb, the REST API, or the MCP server. Each one covers a single task, notes where the surfaces behave differently, and ends with a check you can run. Examples use the FRED provider (openbb-fred) with the key set up in Quick start (User), plus openbb-news, openbb-nasdaq, and openbb-tmx where a command needs more than one provider.

Configure credentials
Set provider keys in user_settings.json, environment variables, or the session, and see which value wins.
Configure preferences and defaults
Change preferences, pick a default provider per command, and pre-fill parameters.
Use openbb.toml
Discovery order, what the launchers apply from it, and when to use JSON or environment variables instead.
Output types
DataFrame, NumPy, dict, Polars, and LLM output, per call or per session, and what each requires.
Pass query parameters
Providers, symbols, dates, choices, and provider-specific keyword arguments in Python and over REST.
Handle warnings and errors
Read, silence, or escalate warnings; catch OpenBBError; map REST status codes.
Environment variables
Set OPENBB_* variables and provider keys, and when each process reads them.

If you are embedding the engine in your own application or writing an extension, start with Quick start (Developer) instead.