Import and export

The Providers tab has Export and Import buttons that move the whole provider list as a JSON file. Use them to set up a second machine, to share a team configuration, or to keep a backup.

Export

Export asks where to save and writes every provider as a JSON object keyed by provider id:

{
  "b2c1…": {
    "id": "b2c1…",
    "label": "Ollama",
    "type": "chat",
    "provider": "ollama",
    "modelName": "qwen2.5-coder:7b-instruct",
    "apiHostname": "localhost",
    "apiPort": 11434,
    "apiProtocol": "http",
    "apiPath": "/v1",
    "apiKey": ""
  },
  "9f0e…": {
    "id": "9f0e…",
    "label": "Ollama FIM",
    "type": "fim",
    "provider": "ollama",
    "modelName": "qwen2.5-coder:1.5b-base",
    "apiHostname": "localhost",
    "apiPort": 11434,
    "apiProtocol": "http",
    "apiPath": "/api/generate",
    "apiKey": "",
    "fimTemplate": "automatic"
  }
}

API keys are included in the export. Treat the file as a secret, or blank the apiKey fields before sharing it.

Import

Import asks for a file and accepts either the exported object or a plain array of providers. Each entry is normalised and validated the same way the form does (ports coerced to numbers, pasted URLs split, paths given a leading slash, fields that do not apply to the type dropped); entries that still fail validation are skipped, and the notification says how many were imported and how many skipped.

Ids are kept, so importing the same file again updates the matching providers rather than duplicating them. Providers in the file that are not on this machine are added; providers on this machine that are not in the file are left alone.

Fields

Field	Required	Notes
id		Any unique string. Generated if missing
label	✓	Display name
type	✓	chat, fim or embedding
provider	✓	ollama, lmstudio, llamacpp, oobabooga, litellm, openwebui, openai-compatible, openai, anthropic, mistral, groq, openrouter, cohere, perplexity, gemini, deepseek, or twinny-p2p
modelName	✓
apiHostname	for endpoint providers	Hostname only
apiPort		Number
apiProtocol		http or https
apiPath		Base for chat, full route otherwise
apiKey	for hosted APIs
fimTemplate	fim only	automatic, codellama, deepseek, codeqwen, codestral, codegemma, stable-code, starcoder, llama or custom-template
deviceId	twinny-p2p only	The paired device’s public key. A device provider only works on a machine that has paired with that device

Where providers are stored

By default in VS Code’s global state for the installation. Set twinny.providerStorageLocation to file to keep them in a JSON file inside the extension’s global storage directory instead; this survives changes that reset global state, and is easier to back up. Export before switching if you have providers you want to keep, then import them afterwards.