Operator AI (BYOK)

Field uses AI in two places. Operator-facing surfaces (email triage, Cmd-K, inline assessment, voice intent) run under your Anthropic API key — Bring Your Own Key, you pay your AI provider directly at their rates. Platform features (scanning, request parsing, report drafts, voice transcription) use Field's own keys and are included in the subscription. This page covers the BYOK side.

What AI does in Field

AI is never client-facing. It's invisible infrastructure that helps you work faster. Field splits AI into two classes:

Operator AI (BYOK — your key). Runs under your Anthropic account at your rates. Covers the operator-facing surfaces:

• • Email triage (Signal) — summarizes inbound emails with a short assessment and suggested next steps
• • Cmd-K natural language — type questions in plain English and get structured answers from your practice data
• • Inline assessment — contextual analysis of findings, client health, and work items
• • Voice intent — interprets transcribed voice commands

Platform AI (Field's key). Built into the core service. You don't configure these and you aren't billed for them:

• • Site scanning — health, security, performance, and SEO checks
• • Request parsing — initial structured extraction from inbound emails
• • Report drafts — period reports composed from work entries, findings, and uptime
• • Voice transcription (OpenAI Whisper) — speech-to-text before voice intent kicks in

How to add your API key

Go to Integrations and find the AI Assistant card. Enter your Anthropic API key — it starts with sk-ant-. Field validates the key immediately and confirms the connection.

Your key is stored server-side (with provider-managed encryption at rest) and only used server-side. Field never exposes it in client-facing responses or browser-side code.

Automatic model selection

Field automatically chooses the right model for each task. You don't pick models — Field does:

This keeps your API costs low — most interactions use the cheaper model, and the more capable model is only invoked when the task requires it.

Privacy

When you provide your own key, AI requests go directly to Anthropic under your API account. Field sends the minimum context needed for each task — site data, email content, finding details. Your data is subject to Anthropic's API data policy (not used for training by default).

Field logs the shape of AI interactions (topic, category, response type) but not the content. This interaction log is used for usage patterns and adaptive suggestions — never for retraining or sharing.

Without AI — what still works

Every core feature of Field works without an AI key. Here's what changes:

• • Email triage — emails still flow into Inbound with deterministic assessment (sender, subject, client match) instead of AI summaries
• • Cmd-K — namespace commands and navigation work normally; natural language queries are unavailable
• • Reports — data aggregation works; you write the narrative yourself instead of starting from an AI draft
• • Findings — scan results, health scores, and the full finding catalog work identically

AI is an accelerant, not a dependency. The platform is fully functional without it.