Credentials

A credential is one of your own provider API keys, saved once so several features can share it. Search Stack is bring-your-own-key: you pay the provider directly, and we never resell or mark up their usage.

Credentials live on Models › Credentials. You can add one there directly, or paste a key into any judge, reranker or embedding model dialog — a new key typed into one of those is saved as a credential automatically, ready to reuse.

Providers

Seven vendors can be saved: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Cohere, Voyage, Microsoft and Amazon.

A credential is stored against the vendor, not the feature, which is what lets one key serve more than one purpose — a single Voyage key can back both a reranker and an embedding model.

How keys are stored

The key is encrypted with AES-GCM before it is written, and it is never returned again — not to the console, not to the API. Only the last four characters are kept in the clear, so the console can show you •••• a1b2 and you can tell one saved key from another.

That is also why there is no “show key” button anywhere. If you lose track of which key is which, rotate it rather than trying to read it back.

Add a credential

1. Go to Models › Credentials and choose Add credential.
2. Pick the Provider.
3. Paste the Key.
4. Optionally, under Advanced, set a Custom endpoint — the base URL of a proxy, gateway or compatible host. Leave it blank to use the vendor’s default.

You don’t name a credential. A name is generated for you from the vendor — anthropic-1, anthropic-2 and so on. Saving the same vendor, endpoint and key twice is rejected rather than duplicated; you’ll be told which existing credential already holds it.

Verification

Keys for Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are checked the moment you save them. The check is a free, read-only call to the vendor’s models list — it lists nothing and generates nothing, so it costs you no tokens. If the key is rejected the credential is not saved, and you’ll see either “Connection failed: the API key was rejected” or the status the provider returned.

Cohere, Voyage, Microsoft and Amazon keys have no probe, so they save without being verified. A bad key there surfaces the first time a judge, reranker or model actually uses it.

Rotate a key

Open a credential’s ⋮ menu and choose Edit. Enter the replacement in New key, or leave it blank to keep the current one and only change the endpoint.

Rotation is the point of saving keys centrally: every judge, reranker and model sharing that credential picks up the new key at once. There is nothing to update feature by feature.

The vendor and the generated name are the credential’s identity and can’t be changed. To move to a different vendor, add a new credential and reassign the features that used the old one.

What uses a credential

Four things can hold one:

• Judges — the model that scores your results.
• Rerankers — the model that reorders them.
• Embedding models — the model that vectorises your records.
• List cleaning — the optional cleaning credential that extracts facets on import.

The Usage column tells you which state each credential is in: In use with a count you can hover to see the exact consumers, or Orphaned if nothing points at it.

Feeds, media stores and search services keep their own separate credentials and don’t appear here.

Delete a credential

A credential in use cannot be deleted. The menu item is disabled and names what is holding it; detach or repoint that judge, reranker, model or list first. This is deliberate — deleting a key out from under a live reranker would break search rather than tidy anything.

Once nothing references it, delete removes the stored key permanently. It can’t be recovered, so you would need to paste the key again to re-add it.

Cost note: batch pricing

For cleaning, credentials shown as Recommended — Anthropic and OpenAI on their default endpoint — extract through the provider’s batch API at roughly half the price. Other vendors still work; they extract with a per-record call instead.

Setting a custom endpoint turns batching off even for Anthropic and OpenAI, because the batch API lives on the vendor’s own host. If halving the cleaning bill matters more than routing through your proxy, leave the endpoint blank.