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API_KEY.MD

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API Key Security

Generally, locally hosted LLMs need no API key. api_key: "" or leave the API Key field in the GUI blank.

If you are using a locally hosted LLM with no API key you can ignore the rest of this document.

For cloud APIs, I recommend using environment variables for your api keys, but API key security is your responsibility!

  1. Set environment variable:

    a. For Windows, set environment variable permanently in the Windows Environment Variables for either GUI or CLI. You may need to reboot for this to take effect. alt text

    b. For POSIX systems, export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here. I will assume Linux users know what they're doing to configure an env var in shell startup scripts.

  2. Use "OPENAI_API_KEY" as your API Key in VLM Caption:

    a. For CLI users, Reference your env var in config.yaml: api_key: "OPENAI_API_KEY"

    b. For GUI users, paste OPENAI_API_KEY into the GUI's API Key field.

Literal API key value

Using an environment variable (above) is generally preferred.

The value of api_key will be used literally if it is not a value listed here:

  • OPENAI_API_KEY
  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  • GEMINI_API_KEY
  • MY_API_KEY_ENV_VAR_NAME

If you have a different env var name, like MYAWESOMECLOUD_API_KEY you can add it to caption.yaml as an env var reference under the api_key_env_vars key. This causes the application to read the env var instead of using the api key as a literal.

Use:

  1. For CLI users, in caption.yaml paste your api key ito the api_key field.

ex. api_key: "asdfqwerty1234567890foobarbazqux"

  1. For GUI users, paste your actual API key into the GUI