Bring your own AI key
The short version: you don’t need one. Edmund’s triage works out of the box, free, on your device. But if you want a smarter cloud engine, you can bring your own key.
Some apps dangle the good stuff behind a key. Edmund doesn’t, so before anything else, the honest bit: adding a key unlocks nothing. The whole app is already there without one.
Why it’s optional (really)
Edmund’s default engine runs on your device using Apple’s own models. It’s free, it’s private, it works with no signal at all, and it’s genuinely good at the job. Adding your own key doesn’t switch on hidden features. All it does is swap the engine underneath triage for Anthropic’s Claude, which on longer or messier notes can be a bit sharper at guessing the right project. That’s the entire difference. Skip it and you’re not missing anything locked away.
Where to get one
Head to console.anthropic.com, sign up, and create a key under Settings → API Keys. It’ll start with sk-ant-. Anthropic bill you directly for what you use. The key is yours, the account is yours, and Edmund never sees a penny of it or takes a cut.
What it costs
Not much, for this. Triage is a small scrap of text per note, and Edmund defaults to Claude Haiku, the cheapest and fastest model, so you’re talking fractions of a penny a note, likely pennies a month unless you capture constantly. Want the sharper (and pricier) model? You can switch to Sonnet in Settings → Advanced. Either way you’re in charge of the spend, because it’s billed to your account, not mine.
Adding it to Edmund
In Edmund, open Settings, paste the key into the Anthropic field, and that’s it. Triage starts using it from the very next note. The key lives in your Keychain and syncs across your devices through iCloud, so you enter it once and it follows you. Pull it out any time and Edmund drops straight back to the on-device engine, no fuss and nothing lost.
So: skip it and lose nothing, or add it for a little more polish on the tricky notes. Your call, your key, your bill.