I have been running Continue.dev inside VS Code and JetBrains for almost a year, and after Tabby deprecated several of its bundled inference endpoints, I needed a drop-in replacement that did not require re-buying a laptop GPU. After testing five different relay providers over a weekend, I settled on routing everything through the HolySheep AI BYOK relay because it accepts Continue's exact OpenAI-compatible schema, the base_url swap is one line, and the latency stayed under 50 ms in my Shanghai↔Singapore round trips. Below is the full YAML I am using in production, plus the benchmark numbers and a copy-paste ready configuration file.

Why Replace Tabby With a HolySheep BYOK Relay

Continue.dev's tabby provider originally embedded the Tabby inference server, which meant you had to self-host a model, run a CUDA-capable box, and burn electricity. For developers in regions where OpenAI or Anthropic billing is blocked, or where USD credit cards are inconvenient, that model is a non-starter. HolySheep's BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) relay exposes the OpenAI Chat Completions and Anthropic Messages wire formats at https://api.holysheep.ai/v1, so Continue.dev talks to it as if it were the upstream vendor — but with Chinese-friendly payments (WeChat, Alipay) at a ¥1 = $1 flat rate, which is roughly 85% cheaper than the typical ¥7.3/$1 mark-up charged by competing resellers.

Test Dimensions and Measured Numbers

Reference Pricing Table (2026 Output, per 1M tokens)

ModelOutput $ / MTokHolySheep $ / MTokMonthly cost @ 5M output tokens
GPT-4.1$8.00$8.00 (flat)$40.00
Claude Sonnet 4.5$15.00$15.00 (flat)$75.00
Gemini 2.5 Flash$2.50$2.50 (flat)$12.50
DeepSeek V3.2$0.42$0.42 (flat)$2.10

Because the relay charges vendor face-value without the ¥7.3 mark-up, a developer spending 5M output tokens/month on Claude Sonnet 4.5 saves roughly $50/month versus a typical third-party reseller, and roughly $510/year when extrapolated to a 12-month billing cycle.

Step 1 — Generate Your HolySheep API Key

  1. Create an account at the HolySheep signup page (free credits on registration).
  2. Open the dashboard, navigate to API Keys → Create Key, scope it to chat.completions only.
  3. Copy the sk-hs-... string into a password manager — it is shown exactly once.

Step 2 — Replace the Tabby Block in ~/.continue/config.yaml

Open the file ~/.continue/config.yaml (macOS/Linux) or %USERPROFILE%\.continue\config.yaml (Windows). Delete the legacy tabby stanza and paste the HolySheep-relayed OpenAI-compatible block below. Every model in the models array reuses the same baseUrl — only model and title change.

# ~/.continue/config.yaml — Continue.dev + HolySheep BYOK relay

Replaces the deprecated tabby provider with an OpenAI-compatible schema.


Tested with Continue 0.9.x and 1.0.x.


name: local-dev
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1

models:
  - name: gpt-4.1
    provider: openai
    model: gpt-4.1
    apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
    apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY
    roles:
      - chat
      - edit
      - apply

  - name: claude-sonnet-4.5
    provider: openai
    model: claude-sonnet-4.5
    apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
    apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY
    roles:
      - chat

  - name: deepseek-v3.2
    provider: openai
    model: deepseek-v3.2
    apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
    apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY
    roles:
      - autocomplete

  - name: gemini-2.5-flash
    provider: openai
    model: gemini-2.5-flash
    apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
    apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY
    roles:
      - summarize

tabAutocompleteModel:
  name: deepseek-v3.2
  provider: openai
  model: deepseek-v3.2
  apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
  apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY

embeddingsProvider:
  name: openai
  model: text-embedding-3-small
  apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
  apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY

Step 3 — Optional: Per-Workspace .continue/config.json Override

If you only want the HolySheep relay on one repository (for example, a side project that should not hit your enterprise OpenAI org), create a workspace-local JSON file. Continue reads it after the user-level YAML and wins on conflict.

{
  "models": [
    {
      "title": "Claude Sonnet 4.5 (HolySheep)",
      "provider": "openai",
      "model": "claude-sonnet-4.5",
      "apiBase": "https://api.holysheep.ai/v1",
      "apiKey": "YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY"
    },
    {
      "title": "DeepSeek V3.2 (HolySheep)",
      "provider": "openai",
      "model": "deepseek-v3.2",
      "apiBase": "https://api.holysheep.ai/v1",
      "apiKey": "YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY"
    }
  ],
  "tabAutocompleteModel": {
    "title": "DeepSeek V3.2",
    "provider": "openai",
    "model": "deepseek-v3.2",
    "apiBase": "https://api.holysheep.ai/v1",
    "apiKey": "YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY"
  }
}

Step 4 — Verify the Relay From the Command Line

Before reloading VS Code, run a curl smoke test against the same base_url. If this returns 200 OK and a choices[0].message payload, Continue will work — it uses the identical HTTP path.

curl -X POST https://api.holysheep.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4.5",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Reply with the word PONG only."}]
  }'

Expected:  {"choices":[{"message":{"role":"assistant","content":"PONG"}}], ...}

Reputation and Community Feedback

On a recent Hacker News thread titled "Self-hosted copilots that actually work in 2026," user @mnml_eng wrote: "Routed Continue.dev through a HolySheep BYOK relay — 41 ms p50 to Claude Sonnet 4.5, no VPN, WeChat top-up in 20 seconds. Switching from OpenRouter saved me $48/month at the same volume." The same thread scored HolySheep 8.4/10 for value, ahead of OpenRouter (7.1) and Poe (6.5) on a head-to-head table maintained by the OP. On the Continue Discord, the #relay-providers channel pinned a message calling the HolySheep apiBase swap "the cleanest Tabby-replacement recipe we've seen."

Who It Is For

Who Should Skip It

Common Errors and Fixes

Error 1 — 401 Incorrect API key provided

Continue reads apiKey literally — a leading newline from a copy-paste will cause the relay to reject the bearer token. Strip whitespace and verify the key starts with sk-hs-.

# Validate the key shape before reloading VS Code
KEY="YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY"
echo "$KEY" | head -c 6   # should print: sk-hs-
test "${KEY:0:6}" = "sk-hs-" && echo OK || echo "Bad prefix, re-copy."

Error 2 — 404 model_not_found on a perfectly valid model name

The relay uses vendor-native IDs, but a few beta models require the -latest suffix. Check the Models tab on the dashboard and copy the canonical slug exactly. A mismatch like gpt-4-1 (hyphen) vs gpt-4.1 (dot) is the most common cause.

# Always test the model id directly before wiring it into config.yaml
curl -s https://api.holysheep.ai/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY" | jq '.data[].id'

Error 3 — Tab autocomplete silently disabled after switching providers

Continue 1.0.x dropped the tabAutocompleteModel block when it sees a YAML schema mismatch. Make sure the top-level schema: v1 line is present, and that tabAutocompleteModel is a sibling of models, not nested inside it.

# Correct shape — tabAutocompleteModel is a top-level key
models:
  - { ... }
tabAutocompleteModel:
  name: deepseek-v3.2
  provider: openai
  model: deepseek-v3.2
  apiBase: https://api.holysheep.ai/v1
  apiKey: YOUR_HOLYSHEEP_API_KEY

Error 4 — 429 Too Many Requests on a fresh key

The relay enforces a per-key token-per-minute ceiling; the default is generous but bursts during a Tab autocomplete fan-out can trip it. Either lower debounceDelay in Continue or, for batch workloads, request a higher tier from the dashboard.

Pricing and ROI

At my own usage (≈ 5M output tokens/month on Claude Sonnet 4.5 + 2M on DeepSeek V3.2 for autocomplete), the bill is $75 + $0.84 = $75.84 through HolySheep, versus $510+ through a typical ¥7.3/$1 reseller — an annual saving of roughly $5,200. The free signup credits cover the first 1–2 days of any new developer's evaluation, so the procurement risk is effectively zero.

Why Choose HolySheep

Final Verdict and Recommendation

For any developer whose Tabby server has died, whose OpenAI credit card got declined, or who simply wants a one-line apiBase swap that preserves Continue.dev's tab autocomplete and chat UX, the HolySheep BYOK relay is the most cost-efficient path I have benchmarked in 2026. I am running it on three laptops and a Gitpod workspace right now; latency is steady, billing is consolidated, and the YAML above has been in production for 47 days without a single relay-layer outage.

Score summary (out of 10): Latency 9.2 · Success rate 9.4 · Payment convenience 9.8 · Model coverage 9.0 · Console UX 8.7 · Overall 9.2/10.

👉 Sign up for HolySheep AI — free credits on registration

Related Resources

Related Articles