Connecting Anthropic, OpenAI, Google
Paste your key, hit Test, we verify with a 1-token request and encrypt the key at rest.
distro is BYOK — bring your own key. You pay the provider directly; we don't mark up inference. Ten providers are supported out of the box.
The providers
- Anthropic (claude.ai API) — our recommended default for drafts
- OpenAI (platform.openai.com) — best for voice analysis at low cost
- Google AI (Gemini) — best free tier
- OpenRouter — one key, hundreds of models
- Groq — fastest for real-time streaming
- Mistral — EU-based, good for data residency
- Together — open-source models on managed infra
- Perplexity — for research-type prompts
- Custom (OpenAI-compat) — any endpoint with the OpenAI API shape
- Custom (Anthropic-compat) — any endpoint with the Messages API shape
Connecting
Settings → Providers → Add provider. Pick a kind, paste your API key, give it an optional nickname. Hit Test connection — we send a 1-token request to verify. On success, the provider flips to "Connected" with the current date.
Key storage
Keys are encrypted at rest with libsodium's XSalsa20-Poly1305. The decryption key is a server-only environment variable. Keys never appear in logs, never return to the client, never leak into error messages. Deleting a provider zeroes out the encrypted blob.
Multiple providers
You can connect more than one — in fact, we recommend it. See smart routing configuration. Common setup: Anthropic for long-form drafts, OpenAI for fast analysis, Groq for interactive streaming.
Revoking at the provider
If you rotate or revoke a key at the provider, distro will start seeing 401s. We surface this in Settings and disable the provider until you re-authenticate. No silent failures.