openai-agents 0.13.2 Silently Dropped openai v1 Support — Here's What Breaks

Status: READY TO STAGE
Written: 2026-03-27 (W100)
Based on: openai-agents 0.13.2 (released 2026-03-26T23:57Z), ADAM W123 landscape scan
Target slot: April 21-23, 2026 (or sooner if v1→v2 friction shows up in community)
Product: AI Dev Toolkit ($29) — https://kazdispatch.gumroad.com/l/zqeopc
Pre-publish checklist:

[x] Replace [POLAR_OR_GUMROAD_LINK] with live product URL (filled 2026-03-27 W126: kazdispatch.gumroad.com/l/zqeopc)
[x] Verify openai-agents still on 0.13.x at time of publish — confirmed 0.13.5 latest as of 2026-04-06 (patch release, no breaking changes; 0.14.0 still pending — nest_handoff_history rename ships there)
[ ] Check if a2a-sdk 1.0.0 has shipped by publish date — if so, add a note to the A2A section
[ ] Check if nest_handoff_history rename has shipped in 0.14.0 — if so, add a second section for that breaking change
[ ] Verify no duplicate coverage from other recent articles
[ ] Stage to Dev.to draft, dispatch kaz to schedule

Article

openai-agents 0.13.2 shipped on March 26th. If you're running openai v1.x in the same environment, your agents are now broken.

No deprecation warning. No migration guide. Just a new dependency requirement in PyPI metadata that says openai<3,>=2.26.0 — and your pip install openai-agents either fails with a conflict error or silently upgrades openai to 2.x and breaks your existing openai client code.

Here's exactly what changed and how to fix it in about 10 minutes.

What Actually Changed

Before 0.13.2, openai-agents was compatible with both openai v1.x and v2.x. Starting with 0.13.2, it requires openai>=2.26.0 and explicitly drops support for v1.

This is relevant if you:

Have a project that pinned openai==1.x.x or openai<2
Inherited a codebase that hasn't been updated since late 2024
Are running openai-agents alongside other packages that still depend on openai v1

The practical effect: running pip install openai-agents --upgrade in an existing environment will now either fail (if pip can't resolve the conflict) or force openai to 2.x — where some of your existing client-side code may stop working.

What openai v2 Actually Changed

The openai v2 library (released November 2024) restructured the client API significantly:

# openai v1 — you might have code that looks like this
import openai

openai.api_key = "sk-..."
response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
    model="gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

# openai v2+ — the correct pattern
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(api_key="sk-...")  # explicit client instantiation
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

The top-level openai.ChatCompletion.create() call no longer exists in v2. Same with openai.Completion.create(), the old embedding patterns, and the module-level api_key assignment.

If your codebase uses the v1 API directly alongside openai-agents, you have two problems to fix: the dependency conflict and the client code pattern.

The Fast Fix

Step 1: Check where you stand

pip show openai | grep Version
pip show openai-agents | grep Version

If openai is below 2.26.0 and openai-agents is 0.13.2 or newer, you have a conflict.

Step 2: Upgrade openai

pip install "openai>=2.26.0"

Or if you use a requirements file:

# requirements.txt — update this line
openai>=2.26.0

Step 3: Audit your direct openai calls

The most common v1 patterns that break in v2:

# BROKEN in v2
openai.api_key = os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(...)

# FIXED
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()  # reads OPENAI_API_KEY from env automatically
response = client.chat.completions.create(...)

# BROKEN in v2
embeddings = openai.Embedding.create(input=texts, model="text-embedding-3-small")
result = embeddings["data"][0]["embedding"]

# FIXED
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
response = client.embeddings.create(input=texts, model="text-embedding-3-small")
result = response.data[0].embedding

The pattern is consistent: every top-level openai.SomeThing.create() call becomes client.some_thing.create() on an explicit OpenAI() instance.

openai-agents Code Itself Doesn't Change

The good news: if you're writing openai-agents code (defining agents, tools, handoffs), none of that changes. The openai-agents API is stable across this version bump. The v2 requirement is about the underlying HTTP client, not the agent framework API.

# This openai-agents code works exactly the same before and after 0.13.2
from agents import Agent, Runner

agent = Agent(
    name="assistant",
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant.",
)

result = Runner.run_sync(agent, "What's the weather today?")
print(result.final_output)

The only thing that changed is what version of openai is running underneath.

What's Still Coming in 0.14.0

This isn't the only breaking change on the horizon. The nest_handoff_history parameter is being renamed in an upcoming 0.14.0 release — a separate change that hasn't shipped yet. If you're using that parameter in handoff configurations, watch the changelog.

The Broader Pattern

The openai-agents library moves fast — 0.13.0 through 0.13.2 shipped across four days in late March. If you're depending on it in production, pinning to a specific version and testing upgrades before deploying is worth the five minutes it takes to set up.

A dependency audit tool can flag these conflicts before they hit your CI pipeline. If you're running more than three or four AI libraries in the same environment, you'll hit this pattern regularly.

[The AI Dev Toolkit includes a dependency-audit prompt set that checks for version conflicts across openai, anthropic, and the major agent frameworks — https://kazdispatch.gumroad.com/l/zqeopc]