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Bring Your Own OpenRouter Key

Route to GOLD's AI assistant uses OpenRouter, an API gateway that lets you access many AI models with one key.

Why your own key?

After 3 free queries per day, you'll need your own key to keep using the AI. This is so the dashboard stays free to share without me covering everyone's compute. Each query typically costs less than half a cent on your OpenRouter account.

How to get one (about a minute)

  1. Visit openrouter.ai/keys
  2. Sign in with Google (one click)
  3. Click Create Key — name it "Route to GOLD"
  4. Copy the key (starts with sk-or-v1-)
  5. Paste it into the dashboard's AI panel

That's it. Add credits to your OpenRouter account whenever you want — $5 lasts most users a long time.

Where does my key live?

In your browser's local storage. Route to GOLD never stores or logs your key — it's only passed through the request it's used for, then discarded. You can remove it any time via the "Manage" menu in the AI panel.

Why not just sign up to Route to GOLD?

Route to GOLD doesn't have accounts. The dashboard is a personal research framework I share publicly; I'm not building a service. BYOK lets the framework stay accessible without me running a backend that scales with users.