Add your own Claude key
Optional. Bring your own Anthropic key to skip the monthly image cap and pay Anthropic directly instead.
Updated Jul 26, 20263 min readApplies to 1.0.0
Nothing is blocked without this. les Archives starts you on included credits and everything works.
There is one real reason to add a key: included credits come with a monthly image cap and your own key does not. Beta accounts get 500 images a month. That is two or three jobs at the size we suggest. With your own key there is no cap, and you pay Anthropic directly, usually two to four dollars per job.
Make a key at console.anthropic.com
Sign in, go to API keys, create one. Copy it when it is shown, because it is
only shown once. It starts with sk-ant-.
Put billing on that Anthropic account
This is the step people miss. A key with no billing behind it looks valid and fails on the first real request. Add a payment method and put twenty dollars on it, which is roughly five to ten jobs.
Paste it into Settings
Open Settings, choose Connections, and find the card headed AI Processing. Paste into the sk-ant field and press Save next to it. The pill at the top of the card flips from Using plan credits to Custom key active.
Where the key lives
On this Mac, in your local settings, and nowhere else. We never sync it to our servers. Sign in on a second Mac and you paste it again there.
It also makes cataloging faster
On included credits we send three frames per request, because those calls go through our proxy and it has a time limit. With your own key we go direct and use your configured batch size, which is five by default. Fewer round trips, same twenty second pause between them.
The other key, which is not this one
If you are on a Studio or Agency plan you will also see a card called Workspace AI key. That is a different thing. It bills everyone working inside a workspace to one key, and only the owner sets it.
Your personal key is never used for someone else's workspace, and a workspace key never reaches a member's Mac. That is what the proxy in the middle is for.
Going back to credits
Clear the field and save. You are back on included credits, cap and all, and nothing you already cataloged changes.
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