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Connect an engine
Before any AI feature runs, RelyAI needs an engine — an AI provider plus a model, with a key to reach it. This guide walks you through adding one, testing it, and choosing a default. You can add several engines and switch the default whenever you like.
What an engine is
An engine is one AI provider + model combination (for example OpenAI GPT-4o mini). RelyAI sends every AI request to whichever engine you mark Default. Extra engines can sit enabled but idle until you promote one.
Open RelyAI → Settings → Engines & Keys. This is where providers, models and API keys live.
RelyAI → Settings → Engines & Keys
Step 1 — Add an engine
Click Add Engine. You will see these fields:
- Name — a label you'll recognise, e.g. "OpenAI GPT-4o".
- Provider — OpenAI, Anthropic or Ollama.
- Model — the model ID for that provider (see below).
- Max Tokens — the response length ceiling.
- API key — the secret for the provider. The placeholder shows the expected shape (
sk-…/sk-ant-…/ (leave blank for Ollama)). When you edit an engine later, leaving this blank keeps the existing key.
Fill these in for your provider, then move to testing.
Step 2 — Get a key for your provider
OpenAI
Sign in at platform.openai.com → API keys → Create new secret key and copy the sk-… value into the API key field. For Model, gpt-4o-mini is the fast, low-cost default; gpt-4o, gpt-5, gpt-5-mini and gpt-3.5-turbo are also available.
Anthropic
Sign in at console.anthropic.com → Settings → API keys and copy the sk-ant-… value. For Model, the Claude Opus, Sonnet and Haiku families are available; claude-haiku-4-5 is a good low-cost default.
Ollama
Ollama runs open-weight models with zero per-token cost when self-hosted. Start it locally with ollama serve, set the Base URL to your endpoint (for example http://127.0.0.1:11434), and leave the API key blank. To use Ollama Cloud instead, paste the key from your Ollama dashboard. Models include llama3.1:8b (a good default), llama3.1:70b, mistral:7b, qwen2.5:7b and qwen3:8b.
Step 3 — Test the connection
Click Test Connection. The button shows Testing… and then Connection successful when the key and model check out. If it doesn't, re-check the key, the model ID and — for Ollama — that the Base URL is reachable.
Step 4 — Set a default and manage the rest
Click Set as Default on the engine you want RelyAI to use for every AI call. Other engines can stay Enabled as alternatives or be disabled. Only one engine is the default at a time; promoting another switches all AI traffic to it instantly.
System key vs customer keys
The key on an engine here is your system key — used whenever a customer hasn't supplied their own. If you turn on Allow customers to use their own API key, customers can enter a key under Account → AI, and their AI usage then runs on their provider quota instead of yours. This is a handy way to shift cost — see Quotas, limits and credits.