microsoft/semantic-kernel · error · ServiceInitializationError

Failed to create OpenAI settings.

Error message

Failed to create OpenAI settings.

What it means

Raised by OpenAIChatCompletion.__init__ when OpenAISettings construction throws a pydantic ValidationError. The settings model (non-Azure) validates api_key (SecretStr|None), org_id (str|None), chat_model_id (str|None). If any field receives a value that fails type coercion, pydantic raises ValidationError which is wrapped here as ServiceInitializationError.

Solutions

1. Inspect the chained ValidationError for the specific field and constraint that failed.
2. Pass api_key as a plain string (str), not a SecretStr or bytes.
3. Verify .env file syntax and encoding (default utf-8).
4. Ensure OPENAI_API_KEY and OPENAI_ORG_ID are set to valid strings in the environment.

Example fix

# before (api_key passed as SecretStr)
from pydantic import SecretStr
service = OpenAIChatCompletion(
    ai_model_id='gpt-4o',
    api_key=SecretStr('sk-...'),
)
# after (plain string)
service = OpenAIChatCompletion(
    ai_model_id='gpt-4o',
    api_key='sk-...',
)

import os

api_key = os.environ.get('OPENAI_API_KEY')
if not api_key or not isinstance(api_key, str):
    raise ValueError(
        'OPENAI_API_KEY must be set to a non-empty string in the environment or .env file.'
    )

from semantic_kernel.exceptions.service_exceptions import ServiceInitializationError

try:
    service = OpenAIChatCompletion(
        ai_model_id='gpt-4o',
        api_key=os.environ.get('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
    )
except ServiceInitializationError as e:
    cause = e.__cause__
    if cause:
        print(f'Settings validation failed: {cause}')
    raise

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing OpenAIChatCompletion with a malformed .env file, an api_key of the wrong type (e.g. bytes), or an OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable with an incompatible value. Since most fields are str|None, type errors are uncommon but can arise from corrupt env files or passing SecretStr where str is expected.

Common situations: Corrupted .env file with invalid dotenv syntax; OPENAI_API_KEY set to an empty string in CI; env_file_encoding mismatch; passing api_key as a SecretStr object rather than a plain string; OPENAI_ORG_ID set to a non-string value in config management tools.

Related errors

• Failed to create OpenAI settings.
• The provided reasoning effort
• Expected an AsyncStream[ChatCompletionChunk] response.
• Failed to create NVIDIA settings.
• Failed to create Ollama settings.

AI-assisted analysis of microsoft/semantic-kernel@c028a0c7dc (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/493b49c506af09e3. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at python/semantic_kernel/connectors/ai/open_ai/services/open_ai_chat_completion.py:62

                the env vars or .env file value.
            default_headers: The default headers mapping of string keys to
                string values for HTTP requests. (Optional)
            async_client (Optional[AsyncOpenAI]): An existing client to use. (Optional)
            env_file_path (str | None): Use the environment settings file as a fallback
                to environment variables. (Optional)
            env_file_encoding (str | None): The encoding of the environment settings file. (Optional)
            instruction_role (str | None): The role to use for 'instruction' messages, for example,
        """
        try:
            openai_settings = OpenAISettings(
                api_key=api_key,
                org_id=org_id,
                chat_model_id=ai_model_id,
                env_file_path=env_file_path,
                env_file_encoding=env_file_encoding,
            )
        except ValidationError as ex:
            raise ServiceInitializationError("Failed to create OpenAI settings.", ex) from ex

        if not async_client and not openai_settings.api_key:
            raise ServiceInitializationError("The OpenAI API key is required.")
        if not openai_settings.chat_model_id:
            raise ServiceInitializationError("The OpenAI model ID is required.")

        super().__init__(
            ai_model_id=openai_settings.chat_model_id,
            api_key=openai_settings.api_key.get_secret_value() if openai_settings.api_key else None,
            org_id=openai_settings.org_id,
            service_id=service_id,
            ai_model_type=OpenAIModelTypes.CHAT,
            default_headers=default_headers,
            client=async_client,
            instruction_role=instruction_role,
        )

    @classmethod

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