Disable SSL verification for OpenAI endpoints

[elliott-davis]

Is this a new feature, an improvement, or a change to existing functionality?

New Feature

How would you describe the priority of this feature request

Critical (currently preventing usage)

Please provide a clear description of problem this feature solves

When connecting to OpenAI-compatible endpoints that use self-signed certificates, you would encounter errors like:

httpcore.ConnectError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: self-signed certificate in certificate chain

Describe your ideal solution

add the ability to disable SSL certificate verification when using OpenAI-compatible endpoints with self-signed certificates. This is particularly useful when:

- Running OpenAI-compatible endpoints with self-signed certificates in development environments
- Working behind corporate proxies that use custom SSL certificates
- Testing with local OpenAI-compatible servers

Additional context

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct
• I have searched the open feature requests and have found no duplicates for this feature request

[dagardner-nv]

PR #1640 added support for this, and will be included in the v1.6 release.