Connect your own model key
Your companion needs a brain — a large language model that turns its context, memories, and tools into a reply. By default weside provides one. But you can also point your companion at a model you control by connecting your own provider key, so you pay the provider directly and decide exactly which model answers.
What it is
Section titled “What it is”In your account’s Data Residency settings you choose where your companion’s thinking happens. Three modes ship today:
- Region — a weside-hosted model pinned to a region (EU or USA), gated by your plan.
- WESIDE preset — a curated platform model.
- BYOK (bring your own key) — you paste a provider key, and your companion talks to that provider on every turn.
BYOK is the developer-facing one. The key is stored encrypted, scoped to your account, and never echoed back to you after you save it.
Why it matters to you
Section titled “Why it matters to you”If you already pay for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or a Claude Code/Cursor subscription, BYOK lets your companion use that — no second bill, your usage limits, your model choice. One notable option: a Claude Code OAuth token, so your companion answers through your own Max/Pro subscription rather than weside credits.
How you use it
Section titled “How you use it”- Open Settings → Data Residency and choose BYOK.
- Pick a provider. The base URL and auth are server-controlled per provider — you supply only the key and, where offered, a model name.
- Paste your key (minimum 10 characters) and save. weside runs a one-token probe to confirm the key works before storing it.
For the Claude Code OAuth provider (plan-gated to higher tiers), generate the token in your terminal:
claude setup-token# → produces a token starting with sk-ant-oat01-Paste that token as the key. You pay through your Claude subscription, not weside.
Limits & edge cases
Section titled “Limits & edge cases”- Plan-gated. Region selection and the Claude Code OAuth provider require a qualifying plan; lower tiers see a 403 prompting an upgrade.
- No raw weside proxy keys yet. weside does not currently hand out a personal
wsk_-style key to use weside as an OpenAI/Anthropic endpoint from your own tools — the supported direction is the reverse: connect your provider key here. - The key is write-only. After saving, weside reports only whether a key is stored (
has_api_key), never the value. To rotate, paste a new one. - Verification can reject a bad key at save time via the inference probe (the Claude Code OAuth provider skips the live probe).