v2.1.0 — the CLI command is now venice-py

Unofficial, community-maintained SDK for Venice.ai. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Venice AI.
Requires Python 3.13+.

pip install --upgrade 'venice-ai>=2'

The CLI command is now venice-py. If you use the [cli] extra, this release needs
a few minutes of your attention. The Python library API is unchanged.

Why the rename

Venice's official CLI — veniceai-cli,
published to npm in March 2026 — installs a binary named venice. As of v2.0.0, so did
this SDK's [cli] extra:

npm install -g veniceai-cli          →  bin: { "venice": "dist/index.js" }
pip install 'venice-ai[cli]>=2'      →  console_scripts: venice=venice_ai.cli:cli

With both installed, which program ran depended on PATH order — typically this SDK's
inside an activated virtualenv, and Venice's outside it. Because the two share subcommand
names (chat, image, video, embeddings, models, characters, config), the
collision was silent: venice chat "hi" did not report a conflict, it ran the other
tool and rejected the flags.

We took the name five months after Venice did, on an unofficial SDK, against the vendor's
own official tool. The two are unrelated programs and no longer contend for it.

What you need to do

Update scripts, aliases, and CI steps:

venice chat start        # before
venice-py chat start     # after

Regenerate shell completions. The environment variable is now _VENICE_PY_COMPLETE:

venice-py completion zsh >> ~/.zshrc

Delete the old entry point. Upgrading in place does not remove it. If venice --version
still prints a Venice AI CLI banner after upgrading, a stale script is left over from
v2.0.x and the collision persists — remove it with the environment active:

rm "$(command -v venice)"

Why this is a minor release

The rename touches only the console script, which is optional ([cli] extra) and two days
old. Nothing about the importable library changed: no module paths, signatures, or types
moved. Code that does not shell out to venice needs no changes.

Not the official CLI

This SDK is unofficial and community-maintained. For Venice's official command-line tool,
see veniceai/venice-cli — a separate Node program,
still invoked as venice. Both can be installed side by side.

Links

Documentation ·
CLI Reference ·
CHANGELOG ·
Full diff