[Question] How to configure HTTP proxy for ai-proxy plugin to access external AI models?

[huanghuang0913]

Environment：
APISIX version: 3.14
Deployment method: Running from source code (started via make run, not Docker)
OS: Linux
Plugin: ai-proxy with provider: openai-compatible

Problem Description
I'm using APISIX's ai-proxy plugin to proxy requests to Alibaba Cloud DashScope (an external AI service at https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com). However, my environment can only access the internet via an HTTP proxy.
Other routes that don't require the proxy (pointing to internal IPs like 10.x.x.x or 172.x.x.x) work fine. But when I try to access the DashScope route via ai-proxy, I get a 500 Internal Server Error.

What I've Tried
I attempted to configure the proxy by adding environment variables in conf/config.yaml like this:

nginx_config:
env_vars:
- https_proxy=http://my-proxy-ip:port
- http_proxy=http://my-proxy-ip:port
- no_proxy=127.0.0.1,localhost,10.0.0.0/8,172.16.0.0/12,192.168.0.0/16

But this configuration doesn't seem to take effect. After restarting APISIX by apisix reload, requests to the external AI endpoint still fail with 500, and there's no evidence that the proxy is being used.

My Route Configuration:

curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes" -X PUT
-H "X-API-KEY: ${admin_key}"
-d '{
"id": "GTXT-Qwen3.5-flash",
"name": "qwen3.5-flash",
"uri": "/v11/chat/completions",
"methods": ["POST"],
"plugins": {
"ai-proxy": {
"provider": "openai-compatible",
"auth": {
"header": {
"Authorization": "Bearer '"$GTXT_API_KEY"'"
}
},
"override": {
"endpoint": "https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1/chat/completions"
},
"timeout": 6000000
},
"prometheus": {}
}
}'

Questions

1. What is the correct way to configure an HTTP/HTTPS proxy for the ai-proxy plugin when APISIX is running from source code (not in Docker)?
2. Does the nginx_config.env_vars approach in config.yaml actually work for this purpose? If not, what is the recommended alternative?
3. Should I set system environment variables (HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, NO_PROXY) before starting APISIX? If so, how can I verify that they are being picked up by the APISIX worker processes?
4. Is there any plugin-specific proxy configuration within ai-proxy that I'm missing? The documentation doesn't seem to mention proxy support.

Additional Context
• Other internal routes (without proxy) work correctly, so APISIX core is functioning.
• I can confirm that the proxy server itself is working (e.g., curl -x my-proxy:port https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com succeeds from the same machine).
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[dosubot[bot]]

Unfortunately, the ai-proxy plugin currently does not support HTTP/HTTPS proxy configuration for its outbound requests. This is a confirmed limitation, not a misconfiguration on your side.

Why your attempts didn't work:

• The nginx_config.env_vars approach won't help here because the ai-proxy plugin uses lua-resty-http to make outbound requests via cosockets, and this library does not automatically read http_proxy/https_proxy environment variables [1]. Proxy support requires an explicit httpc:set_proxy_options() call, which the ai-proxy plugin never makes [2].
• Other APISIX plugins like openid-connect and authz-keycloak do have explicit proxy support via a proxy_opts schema field [3] [4], but this pattern was not implemented in ai-proxy.

Workarounds for your situation:

1. OS-level transparent proxy (recommended): Use redsocks + iptables to transparently redirect outbound traffic from the APISIX process through your HTTP proxy. This doesn't require any APISIX configuration changes.
2. Network-level routing: Set up a local forward proxy (e.g., Tinyproxy, Squid) as a transparent proxy on the machine, routing traffic destined for external IPs through your corporate proxy.
3. VPN or direct connectivity: If possible, establish a network route that allows the APISIX host to reach dashscope.aliyuncs.com directly.

This is a known gap that has been discussed in the community [5]. If this feature is important for your use case, consider opening a feature request issue to add proxy_opts support to the ai-proxy plugin — the underlying lua-resty-http library already supports it; the plugin just needs to expose and wire up the configuration.

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