Help · AI setup

Set up AI: bring your own API key

TableDI's AI features run on your account with a provider you choose. We don't resell tokens, don't proxy the requests, and never see the key. Here's the setup, and an honest account of what leaves your computer when you use it.

Add your key

Open Desktop settings (the entry below Setting in the left sidebar, or Cmd+, on macOS / Ctrl+, on Windows) and go to the AI tab.
Paste your API key.
Leave Chat completions endpoint empty for OpenAI, or paste another provider's URL (see below).
Optionally set a Model. Empty means the provider's default.
Save. The data engine restarts so it picks the key up — about seven seconds. Your tables are written to disk first.

Which providers work

Anything that speaks the OpenAI chat completions API. That covers OpenAI itself, most hosted-model gateways, and a local runtime on your own machine if it exposes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Paste the full URL, including the path — it usually ends in /chat/completions.

If a provider needs headers we don't send, or uses a different request shape, it won't work here. We'd rather say that plainly than have you debug a silent failure.

What it costs

Whatever your provider charges for what you use, billed by them to you. TableDI adds nothing and takes nothing. There's no credit balance on our side and no per-seat AI fee — the paid license unlocks the AI features; the tokens are between you and the provider.

In practice a few dozen formula suggestions cost less than a cup of coffee. Reading tables out of images costs more, because images are expensive to send.

What leaves your machine, exactly

This is the one place where TableDI's "nothing goes anywhere" changes shape, so it's worth being precise.

Without AI: nothing. The engine and the interface both run on your computer.
With AI: the request for that one action goes from this app straight to the provider you configured — your question, plus the column headers and the sample rows needed to answer it. It does not pass through any server of ours, because we don't have one in this path.
Your key is written to settings.json in the app's data folder on this computer. It is not uploaded, and it is not included in .tdbk backups.
What the provider does with it is governed by your agreement with them, not by us. If you're working with data that can't go to a third party, don't turn AI on for that table — everything else in TableDI still works.

Removing the key

Same tab, Remove key. The AI features stop working; nothing else changes. Revoke the key at the provider too if you're removing it because it leaked.

If AI says it's out of credit

Versions before 0.0.9 had a bug where every AI call was refused as out of quota, with Credit: -1 in the corner. That's fixed. If you see it, you're on an old build — update.

Still stuck? Email us — one inbox, read by the people who build TableDI.