Operator AI (BYOK)

Field uses AI to help you triage, draft, and assess — but it runs on your API key, under your control. Bring Your Own Key means you pay your AI provider directly, at their rates, for exactly what you use. Studio plan operators get AI included — no key needed.

What AI does in Field

AI is never client-facing. It's invisible infrastructure that helps you work faster:

• • Email triage (Signal) — summarizes labeled Gmail 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
• • Report draft assistance — helps draft monthly client reports from the period's data

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 encrypted and only used server-side. Field never exposes it in client-facing responses or browser-side code.

Auto-tier 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.

Studio plan includes AI

On the Studio plan ($99/mo), AI is included at no additional cost. You don't need to provide an API key — Field uses its own allocation. All the same features work identically. If you prefer to use your own key for cost transparency or control, you can still enter one and it will take priority.

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:

• • Gmail 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.