Powering Your Tale: How to Add Your Own API Keys

Bring Your Own Key lets your sagas run on the model you choose, billed directly by OpenRouter instead of sharing a pooled queue. It is optional, and the platform keeps working on its default models if you never add one.

Why OpenRouter

OpenRouter speaks one OpenAI-compatible API and fronts dozens of models, so Your Tale needs a single key from a single account. Scene prose, the state engine, moderation and premium narration all use that same key. There is no per-provider setup and no juggling endpoints when you want to try a different model.

Create your key

Sign up at openrouter.ai. Free accounts can already call a set of free models, which is a good way to test the waters before adding credit. When you are ready, open the Keys page in your dashboard and create a key. Name it something you will recognise later, like your-tale, and copy it immediately: the full value is shown only once.

Add it to Your Tale

Open Settings, find the BYOK panel and paste the key into the OpenRouter field. Pick the model you want to write with, then save. The key is stored server-side and is never sent back to the browser.

What the key powers

Scene narration is the prose you read in a scene, streamed token by token. The state engine is the companion pass that updates stats, inventory, logs and choices. Moderation is the safety check run before a public adventure or a review is published. Premium narration is the spoken scene, when a voice-capable model is configured, with the bundled local voice as a fallback.

If a request through your key fails, Your Tale falls back to the free models so a saga never stalls mid-scene. Billing lives entirely on your OpenRouter account: the platform never charges you for BYOK usage.

Rotating or removing a key

Delete the key in OpenRouter, generate a new one, and paste it over the old value in Settings. If you suspect a key was exposed, rotate first and remove later. The platform re-reads the stored value on the next request, so no restart or re-login is needed. Removing the key returns every request to the default models immediately.