This page covers the Use My AI Key mode, where your stored provider key powers AI for every guest who opens your app. You set a daily spending cap, and Teacher Hive routes AI requests through your key. Best for apps you share with students.
The other mode, Use Their AI Key, asks each guest to paste their own key when they open the app. No provider key on your end, no spending to manage. Best for apps you share with other teachers. See Use My Key vs Use Their Key if you are choosing between the two.
To use your own key for everyone, you need at least one AI provider key on your account. You get keys from the providers themselves, then paste them into Teacher Hive at My Settings · AI Provider Keys. You can connect keys from one provider or all three; each app you build can use any of your connected providers.
What you need
A free or paid account with at least one of these providers:
- Anthropic (Claude) at console.anthropic.com
- OpenAI at platform.openai.com
- Google Gemini at aistudio.google.com
All three providers offer free credit when you sign up. Anthropic's free credits are small. Gemini has the most generous free tier; pick "Get API key" inside Google AI Studio. OpenAI's free credits expire if not used.
How to add a key
- Open My Settings · AI Provider Keys.
- Click the provider you want to connect.
- Paste the key in the field that appears.
- Click Test. If your key works, you'll see a green check and a sample response.
- Click Save.
Repeat for any other providers you want to connect.
Free vs paid Gemini
Gemini has two tiers. Both work with Teacher Hive.
- Free tier, no charge per call, but Google may use guest prompts to train their models. Teacher Hive flags this when your app asks for free-form text input from guests. Fine for preset-only apps (button clicks, multiple choice).
- Paid tier, pay-per-call, no training on your prompts. Required for image generation with Gemini.
How your keys are stored
Keys are encrypted at rest on Teacher Hive's server. They never appear in your app's HTML, never get sent to students, and are not visible to anyone but you. When an app makes an AI call, Teacher Hive's server uses your key on your app's behalf.
You can replace or remove a key at any time. Removing the key for a provider disables AI calls that use that provider.
