You bring your own API key. Vowen never charges you for AI usage; you pay your provider directly, and several have free tiers that cover ordinary daily use.
Model catalogs move. Vowen refreshes its model lists from the app, so the dropdown on your machine is the source of truth. If a model named here is not in the dropdown, pick the one marked (Recommended) instead.Some names that circulated in older documentation are not offered by any provider in Vowen. There is no Llama model in the Groq or Cerebras catalogs, and GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini, Gemini Pro and an unversioned “Claude Sonnet” are not selectable options.
The grid tells you a provider’s status at a glance:
What you see on the card
Meaning
A Setup badge
Not configured yet. Click the card to add a key.
A gear icon
Configured. Click the gear to edit the key or model, or to disconnect.
A checkmark
Your active provider. Everything runs on it.
An amber Setup badge on the right edge of a card is the only sign that a provider has no key yet.
Only unconfigured cards show the Setup badge. Once you configure a provider the gear replaces the badge, and clicking the card body makes that provider active.
On a configured card the badge is gone. The gear opens its settings; the green checkmark beside it means this is the provider everything currently runs on.
Sidebar > Vowen AI > Configure your AI, on the Configuration tab.
2
Click a provider card
Cards with a Setup badge open the configuration panel straight away.
3
Paste your API key
Enter the key from the provider’s dashboard. The panel has a link that opens the provider’s API key page in your browser.
A provider you have not set up yet opens its panel when you click the card. Azure is shown here, which asks for deployment details instead of a model dropdown.
Your API key is encrypted on your machine and is never sent to Vowen. It goes only to the provider it belongs to.
4
Pick a model
Choose from the dropdown. The recommended model is pre-selected.Azure has no dropdown. It asks for a Resource Name, a Deployment ID, and an API Version instead, because the model is whatever you deployed. AWS Bedrock asks for an AWS Region and loads its model list from your account once a key is entered. OpenRouter loads its catalog live.
5
Click Connect
Vowen verifies the key and saves it. The card gains a checkmark, meaning it is now the active connection.
The Custom API card works with any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, self-hosted models, internal gateways. Its panel has one extra field.
The Custom API panel: an optional key, the base URL of your endpoint, and the model name it serves.
API Key (optional): leave blank if your endpoint doesn’t require auth.
Base URL (required): point at your endpoint, for example http://localhost:11434/v1 for Ollama.
Model: a free-text field, because only your endpoint knows what it serves. Type the model identifier exactly as your endpoint expects it.
Fully local AI: install Ollama, run a model, point Base URL at http://localhost:11434/v1 and leave the API key blank. No data leaves your machine.
Below the provider grid there is a dotted Add Custom API card. It creates an additional, separately named Custom API entry with its own name, key, base URL, and model. Keep a local Ollama, a work gateway, and a staging endpoint side by side, each as its own card in the grid, each switchable in one click. Delete a named entry from its own card.
The dotted Add Custom API card sits at the end of the provider grid. It adds a new card rather than editing the built-in Custom API one.
The single built-in Custom API card is free. Creating extra named Custom API entries is a Pro feature.
If you have the claude or codex CLI installed and signed in, Vowen detects it on disk and offers it as an AI provider. There is no key to paste and no card to configure. Availability is a property of your machine, so Vowen re-detects it rather than asking you to enter anything. Runs go through your existing subscription with your own default model, and no key ever reaches Vowen.
Claude Code and Codex are available for meeting summaries and the Ask AI panel inside Notes only.They do not appear in the provider grid on this page, and they cannot be used for AI Enhancement or Command Mode. Installing Claude Code does not give you key-free dictation enhancement. For that you still need one of the 10 providers above.
They show up where a summary provider is chosen (Notes settings and the per-note provider picker). The run is a plain completion with every built-in tool disabled and no MCP servers loaded, so it cannot touch your filesystem, network, or connectors, and Claude Code runs with session persistence off so meeting transcripts stay out of its history.
Open a configured provider’s panel with its gear icon. A Disconnect button sits at the bottom right. Disconnecting removes the key and, if that provider was active, offers a configured fallback to switch to.
Reopening a connected provider's panel with its gear. Disconnect sits at the bottom right.
Configuring more than one provider is worth the two minutes. AI APIs go down and rate-limit, and a second configured provider means switching in one click instead of setting up a key mid-outage.
The active provider shows a checkmark on its card
Click any configured card to make it active
Keys stay saved, so switching back needs no re-entry
When an enhancement or Command Mode run fails, the failure banner offers a chip per configured provider so you can retry without leaving your app
Set up Groq plus Google as a backup. Both have free tiers, so a redundant configuration costs nothing.
Click the gear on a configured card to change its model. Models vary in:
Speed: how quickly responses come back
Quality: how well the model follows instructions and formats text
Cost: per-token pricing on paid providers
AI Enhancement is a light cleanup pass, and the smallest model a provider offers usually handles it well. Command Mode has to follow instructions and emit clean JSON for tool calls, so it benefits from a step up.
Rather than running one expensive model for everything, keep a small fast model as your default and use a Tone to switch to a stronger one in the apps where you need it. A tone can override both the AI provider and the model.
Encrypted on your machine, and never sent to Vowen
Never sent to Vowen servers, only to the provider you selected
Stored locally, never on our infrastructure
Generate a separate API key just for Vowen. If it ever leaks through a synced screenshot or a posted env file, you can revoke that one key without breaking anything else on the same account.
