diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index d45ae21..e1ded6d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ packages = ["src/copra"]
 
 [project]
 name = "copra-theorem-prover"
-version = "1.1.16"
+version = "1.1.17"
 authors = [
   { name="Amitayush Thakur", email="amitayush@utexas.edu" },
 ]
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ classifiers = [
 ]
 
 dependencies = [
-    "itp-interface>=1.1.14",
+    "itp-interface==1.1.14",
     "openai>=1.99.1",
     "tiktoken>=0.12.0",  # Updated: 0.4.0 incompatible with Python 3.14t, needs PyO3 0.23+ for free-threading
     "sentencepiece>=0.2.0",  # Updated: 0.1.99 lacks Python 3.14t wheels, 0.2.1 has cp314t support
diff --git a/src/copra/gpts/gpt_access.py b/src/copra/gpts/gpt_access.py
index 7067b69..e5b2eb0 100644
--- a/src/copra/gpts/gpt_access.py
+++ b/src/copra/gpts/gpt_access.py
@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ def __init__(self,
         if self.is_vllm_model:
             # vLLM models don't need secrets, they use ENV variable for base_url
             self.secret_filepath = None
-            self.api_key = "EMPTY"  # vLLM doesn't require a real API key
+            self.api_key = os.environ.get("VLLM_API_KEY", "EMPTY")  # vLLM doesn't require a real API key
         elif secret_filepath is None:
             # Use the default secret filepath based on the model name.
             assert model_name in self.secret_filepath_map, (
@@ -663,4 +663,4 @@ def test_gpt5_mini_model(self):
         self._run_chat_test("gpt-5-mini", token_count=100)
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
-    unittest.main()
\ No newline at end of file
+    unittest.main()