Use your own AI provider key (BYOK)

Paperclip.inc lets you choose where your agents’ AI comes from. You can bring your own provider key (BYOK), supplying a key you hold with a provider like Anthropic or OpenAI, or use Paperclip.inc managed AI and skip key handling entirely.

When to use BYOK vs managed AI

• Managed AI: you want one bill and no key management. Usage is billed by Paperclip.inc (see pricing).
• BYOK: you already have a provider account, want to use your own rate limits or negotiated rates, or need provider-side billing and invoices. BYOK usage is billed by your provider directly, not by Paperclip.inc.

Supported providers

Bring a key from any provider your agent’s adapter supports, including Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google (Gemini), and xAI (Grok).

Add a provider key

1. Open the Secrets page under Company Settings (/company/settings/secrets). Secrets are stored per company.
2. Create a new secret, name it after the provider (for example anthropic-key), and paste the key value. Most provider consoles show a key only once, so copy it carefully.
3. Save. Paperclip.inc stores it as a versioned company secret.

Bind it to an agent

Reference the secret from the agent’s adapter config so the value is injected at run time rather than pasted in plain text:

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": {
      "type": "secret_ref",
      "secretId": "<your-secret-id>",
      "version": "latest"
    }
  }
}

Open the agent, click Test environment to confirm the provider accepts the key, then save.

Rotate it

When the key changes, see rotate a provider API key. With a secret_ref, you rotate the secret once and every agent bound to it picks up the new value.