For: admins and editors. Members cannot add or change the workspace's provider keys — if AI is not working for you and you are a member, this is a question for whoever runs the workspace.
sqemes does not generate anything itself. Every AI feature — sqemes Chat, drafting playbooks, the marketplace's “Adapt” — runs on somebody's model. Whether you must supply that yourself depends on which of three situations you are in.
1. You have plan credits — no key needed
Every paid Cloud plan includes a monthly allowance of AI credits. They work immediately, with nothing to configure, and are the reason a new workspace can draft its first playbooks before anybody has gone looking for an API key.
Credits are metered: 1 credit = 1,000 tokens, and the allowance does not roll over — an unused month is gone. You can add a key later anyway; a key is used in preference to credits, so it is also the way to stop consuming them.
2. Your workspace is managed — no key needed
Some workspaces are set up with AI included and not metered at all. If that is yours, you will see no credit counter, because there is nothing to count. Nothing to do here.
3. A key is required — nothing works without one
Two cases. A self-hosted instance has no credits at all — self-hosting is bring-your-own-key by design, and that is a deliberate property rather than a missing feature. And a Cloud workspace with no funded model is in the same position until somebody adds one.
In both cases the setup wizard keeps asking for a key whatever else you chose, because skipping it would finish onboarding with nothing able to run.
Where the keys live
Settings → Integrations. Add one key per provider you want to use. Admins and editors can manage them; members cannot see or change them.
A key is per workspace, not per person, so one key serves the whole team — which also means its usage and its bill are shared.
What changes when you bring your own key
Usage stops being capped by us. Your own key means unlimited AI as far as sqemes is concerned; the limit becomes whatever your provider sets.
You pay the provider directly for what you use, separately from your sqemes subscription.
Your prompts go to that provider under your own contract with them — which is usually the point. For many teams this is what makes the data question answerable: the terms that apply are the ones you already signed.
You choose the models. A key unlocks that provider's model list rather than a preselected one.
There is no wrong answer here. Credits are the fastest way to get going; your own key is the answer when usage grows, when a specific model matters, or when someone needs to know exactly whose terms the data travels under.
Updated 27 September 2026 · Article version 1