Most people never enter a key. Your workspace provides the voice infrastructure, the AI builder and a default set of speech and language providers. You only need a key when you pick a provider or a tool that the workspace does not cover.

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What is already provided

  • Voice infrastructure. The servers that carry the call. Managed by your workspace. The Settings panel shows Voice server: Set up and managed by your workspace. If it says Not set up yet. Ask your workspace admin to set it up., ask whoever runs your workspace.
  • The AI builder. The model that turns your description into an agent. Managed by your workspace.
  • Providers your workspace sets up. Any provider whose key the workspace admin has set up shows a small server icon next to its name in Settings, and the node editor marks it Workspace key. You can use it without entering anything. The builder’s Settings panel ends with Your workspace sets up N providers for every agent. and a See the list link to the dashboard, which shows the same number.

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When you need a key

You need a key when the readiness pill or the Settings badge says keys are required. That happens when:
  • You chose a provider under Model (LLM), Voice (TTS) or Hearing (STT) in the Persona that the workspace does not cover.
  • You added a tool that talks to your own account: Calendar (Cal.com), CRM lookup (during call) (HubSpot), Exa Web Search (Exa), Pinecone.
  • You added an after-the-call step that writes to your account: CRM sync (after call) or Helpdesk filing to HubSpot.
In Advanced, the Settings icon on the right rail shows a count of missing keys; in Simple, the Who step lists each key the voice, hearing and model need, with Open Settings. The Settings header repeats it as N keys needed, and the readiness list shows Add your X API key in Settings for each one.

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Where to enter a key

  1. Open Settings: on the right rail in Advanced, or with Open Settings next to a missing key in Simple or in the readiness list.
  2. Under Keys this agent uses, each provider your agent uses has its own row, named after the provider, for example Cal.com or ElevenLabs. A warning icon means the key is missing. A green check means you pasted one. A server icon means your workspace sets it up. The node editor shows the same thing on each provider as Key needed, Your key or Workspace key. Ollama and Custom (OpenAI-compatible) models need no key, so their row says Key optional; see Your own model server.
  3. Paste the key. Use Where do I get this? next to the row to open the provider’s key page.
  4. Close the panel. The key is used for your next Playground call.

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Where keys are kept and who can see them

Settings and the dashboard’s Settings page say the same thing under Where keys are kept:
  • Set up by your workspace. Kept on the workspace server. Every agent here uses it, in the Playground and once published.
  • Pasted here. Kept in this browser tab until you reload or close it. On your Playground calls from this tab, only the agent receives it. No one else in the call does, including a teammate listening in from the dashboard. It is not saved to your account or to the workspace. If you reload the page, paste it again.
  • When you publish. The keys pasted in Settings or saved to the workspace are stored with that version, encrypted, so every call to that version uses them, even after you close the page. A key changed later reaches a published agent when you publish it again. Before you publish, the Publish panel names the pasted keys: This version will be published with the keys you pasted for …. To publish without them, clear them in Settings first.
  • Who can see a key. No page shows a stored key, not even to you: Settings shows its last four characters at most. Stored keys are encrypted, and only the people who run the workspace server can read them.
If you are an admin or the owner of your workspace, Settings has a Save button. A key you paste there is not stored until you click Save. Save keeps it encrypted on the workspace server, for every agent in the workspace: Playground calls use it right away, and each version you publish from then on is stored with it. A saved key’s row says Saved to this workspace with its last four characters, and Remove deletes it.Because a saved key is used by everyone in the workspace, only its admins and owner can save or remove one. Everyone else has no Save button: their pasted keys stay in their browser tab.The dashboard’s Settings page lists the whole workspace instead of one agent: Your workspace sets up N providers for every agent., then the providers under Set up by your workspace and the common ones under Not set up. It never counts keys as needed, because no agent is open there. For anyone who is not a workspace admin, it has no fields: to use a key of your own, paste it in Settings in the builder.

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Where to get common keys

Some providers are workspace-only: the voice infrastructure, the SIP trunk used by SIP Transfer, the mailbox used by the Email tool (Email (SMTP)), Twilio for the SMS and WhatsApp tools, AWS (Amazon Polly and Amazon Bedrock) and Azure Speech. Settings shows them as a status row with no field: Set up by your workspace. or Not set up on this workspace yet. Ask your workspace admin to add it. The readiness list says X is not set up on this workspace. Ask your workspace admin to add it. Ask your workspace admin to set those up.

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If a key does not work

  • The agent starts but the tool does nothing. Check the readiness list in the Playground. A Calendar tool with no event type, or a Pinecone tool with no index name, is dropped before the call even if the key is right.
  • The call fails right after Start. The key may be invalid or the provider may be rejecting it. Try the provider’s own dashboard with the same key.
  • The key disappeared. Pasted keys are kept in the browser tab. Reload means paste again. If you have a Save button, click Save; otherwise ask your workspace admin to set it up for everyone.

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For workspace operators

Keys set by the operator apply to every user and to published agents. They are configured in the server environment, not in the browser. The full list of variables, including the AI builder provider and the default orchestration mode, is in Environment variables. That page is the only place in these docs that lists variable names. On a self-hosted installation it also says how to name the workspace admins who can save keys from Settings.