Alright, we can’t avoid it anymore! LLMs are everywhere, and Python is the way I usually talk to them. Whether you’re building tools, bots, or just experimenting, that’s becoming impossible to ignore. In this short post I’ll show how to start working with OpenAI and Python.

Register and obtain API token

1. Go to https://platform.openai.com
2. Sign in (or create an account)
3. Open API Keys page
4. Click “+ Create new secret key”
5. Provide name and project and click “Create secret key”
6. Save it somewhere, we will use it later

That’s it, we are ready to use the OpenAI API with Python now.

Python part

Firt, we need to install the library

pip install openai

Now, let’s create a simple file, let’s say try_openai.py with the following content:

import os
from openai import OpenAI

api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
client = OpenAI(api_key=api_key)

prompt = "what does the fox say?"

response = client.responses.create(
        model="gpt-4.1-mini",
        input=prompt
        )

print(f"You have asked: {prompt}")
print("LLM answer is:")
print(response.output_text)

You won’t believe me, but that’s it! Now let’s run it ans see what’ll happen:

export OPENAI_API_KEY='<YOUR API KEY HERE>'
python ./try_openai.py

The output will be similart to this (depends on the model we used for this. In our example it is gpt-4.1-mini):

You have asked: what does the fox say?
LLM answer is:
"The fox says" is a reference to the viral song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" by the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. In the song, they humorously speculate about the sounds a fox might make, suggesting various funny and nonsensical noises like:

- "Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!"
- "Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!"
- "Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!"
- "Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!"

In reality, foxes make a variety of sounds including barks, screams, howls, and gekkering (a guttural chattering noise), used for communication.

What’s now?

Now, knowing this you can start building your own apps and services powered by AI! Also, for some of you it might be interesting to check this my small exampe project - oa2tg. It is a small experimental tool to post AI generated content to the Telegram channel.

See ya!