Where do your AI keys go when you use our tools? A straight answer
An AI provider API key is a credit card number that also reads your mail. Any tool that asks for one should answer a hard question first: where does this string actually go? We make several tools that run on your provider keys — the SamAI browser extension, the /ai-hub/chat page, the account vault — so here is the answer, in enough detail to check our work.
The rule: your key goes to your provider, never through us
Every BYOK surface we ship calls the provider directly from your browser. When you chat on /ai-hub/chat, the request travels browser → provider; you can open devtools and watch it happen. Our servers never see the prompt, the response, or the key in transit. We know this claim is easy to make and hard to believe, so we made it easy to verify instead: the network tab shows only two kinds of requests from that page — provider API calls, and one same-origin call that fetches your key from your own vault.
The vault: encrypted at rest, honest about the rest
If you save keys to your account (so they follow you across devices), they live in the settings vault: AES-256-GCM encrypted per key before storage, list views show only the last four characters, and a key is only ever decrypted when your own session asks for it over TLS. We say this plainly on the settings page and we'll say it here too: because the encryption is server-side, the server can technically decrypt — that's the trade you make for cross-device sync, and if you don't want it, don't save; the chat page works with a key you paste per session too.
The extension: local first
The SamAI extension takes the stricter path by default: keys in its BYOK mode live in your browser profile's own storage, used only to call the providers you configured. Its memory features store what they store locally for the same reason. The philosophy is consistent across the 12 tools in our products catalog — your credentials are load-bearing for you, not inventory for us.
What we never do
- We never proxy your provider traffic through our infrastructure — no middlebox, no logging, no 'optimization layer' reading your prompts.
- We never train on your keys, prompts, or outputs. (A key you can't use is a strange thing to train on, but the industry has earned the question.)
- We never email a key back to you, display one in a list, or include one in a support export — last-four hints only.
- We never gate the BYOK surfaces behind a subscription. Chat with your own free-tier keys costs you nothing; the Dracon Omni subscription buys the hosted tools and the intel layer, not access to your own accounts.