Using your own AI keys

Future Vision renders come with a monthly allowance on your plan. If you're running a lot of them — busy season, big jobs, a client who wants to see four versions of the same shower — you can hook up your own AI account instead and stop counting.

When you do, renders bill to your provider account directly, and the monthly allowance stops applying.

You'll only see this if Future Vision is turned on for your account. We're rolling that out gradually, so if the tile isn't there yet, nothing is broken.

What you need

An account with one of the two providers that paints renders:

• OpenAI — a key from your OpenAI account, under API keys.
• Google AI — a key from Google AI Studio, under Get API key.

You don't need both. BidCraft uses whichever one matches the render engine on your account, so save the key for the provider you have. If you're not sure which engine you're on, save the one you've got — if it's not the one in use, it just sits there until it is.

Both providers will ask for a payment method and charge you directly for what you use. Renders are cheap, but they aren't free, and that bill is between you and them.

Connecting it

1. Go to Connected Apps and open Your AI Keys.
2. Paste your key into the row for that provider.
3. Hit Save & verify.

We check the key against the provider right away. A green Active pill means you're good — your very next render runs on your account.

Reading the pills

• Active — checked and working. This key is in use.
• Unverified — saved, but we couldn't reach the provider to confirm it (their side was busy or slow). Hit Re-verify in a minute. Renders keep running on BidCraft's key until it goes Active — we never quietly use a key we haven't confirmed.
• Key error — the provider rejected it. The reason shows right underneath.

When something goes wrong mid-render

You'll get one of two messages, and they mean different things:

• "Your key was declined" — the key stopped working. Usually it got deleted or rotated on the provider's side. Generate a fresh one, paste it in, save. The row flips to Key error so you know where to look.
• "Your key is out of credit or rate-limited" — nothing's wrong with the key, the account behind it just needs money or a minute. Top it up (or wait) and try again. We leave the key alone in this case, because it isn't the problem.

The safety ceiling

Once you're on your own key the header stops counting down and just says Running on your own API key.

There's still one guard: 500 renders a month. That's not a product limit, it's a seatbelt — if something ever went haywire and started generating in a loop, it'd be your card getting hit, not ours. Five hundred is far more than any real month of work. If you somehow reach it, it resets on the 1st.

Taking it back off

Hit Remove on the row and confirm. Renders go straight back to running on BidCraft's key with your normal monthly allowance — no gap, nothing to re-enable.

Who can do this

Owners and admins only. These are billable credentials for the whole company, so sales and crew never see this tile.

Is my key safe?

It's encrypted before it's stored, and it's never shown back to you — after you save it, the row only ever displays the last four characters. Nobody outside your company can see or use it.