Pay once, then run iton the AI key you already have
Plenty of product owners and analysts already hold an API key: the team has an OpenAI account, the company standardised on Claude, the budget already runs through one of them. Khint Lifetime is built for exactly that situation. One payment, your key in the keychain, and your agent runs stop drawing on anyone's monthly quota.
Two ways to pay
for the same shortcut
A tool that rewrites a ticket in two seconds is worth paying for. Which invoice it lands on is a different question, and it's often the one that stalls the purchase. On a monthly Khint plan you never think about keys: runs draw on a credit wallet that resets on the first of the month. On Lifetime you pay once and plug in a provider key you may already be expensing, which suits anyone whose usage is spiky, whose employer won't add another recurring line item, or who simply wants the model relationship to be theirs. Same agents, same workflows, same Memory, different meter.
From a provider key to a working shortcut
Five steps, and only the first two are setup.
Buy once, and Billing turns into a key field
Khint Lifetime is a single payment instead of a subscription. Once it is active, the plan banner in Settings, Billing is replaced by a Your API key block: a provider picker, a key field and a Test button. There's no seat count to manage and no renewal date to diary.
Pick your provider and paste the key
Anthropic (Claude) or OpenAI. Press Test and Khint validates the key against that provider before you rely on it, so a typo surfaces there and not in the middle of a refinement session. The key is written to your operating system keychain, not to a settings file you might sync somewhere by accident.
Run your agents exactly as before
Nothing about the daily gesture changes. Select the rough text, press Cmd+Shift+K, pick an agent, and the result is pasted back where you were typing. The difference is invisible and financial: that run goes out on your key, and Khint stops counting it against a credit wallet. Your provider bills the tokens, at whatever rate you already negotiated with them.
The idea bar runs on your key too
Type what you want in plain language in the palette, “summarize these notes and file the two decisions as issues”, and Khint plans the steps for you. The writing steps of that plan run on your key like any other agent run. See the idea bar for what the planner can and can't assemble.
Capture runs on your key too
Capture reads a region of your screen into text, and it uses your own key with either provider. The one thing that stays provider-dependent is PowerPoint diagram generation, which needs a higher-tier engine and so runs on your key only when that key is from Anthropic. It's a deliberate limit rather than a silent fallback, so you can decide the provider with it in mind.
What runs on your key, and what does not
The split is fixed and worth reading before you buy.
The right-hand column isn't an upsell: those are features whose prompts and models Khint controls end to end, so they keep running on the managed backend. Lifetime includes a 300 credit monthly allowance to cover them, which is the same allowance the Free plan gets. Everything you trigger by hand, all day, sits in the left-hand column.
Your key, and still the small payload
Bringing your own key changes who bills the tokens, not what gets sent. An agent still sees only the text you selected, plus the compacted summary of your active Memory session if you opted that agent in. Memory sessions themselves stay in a local database on your machine, and the input and output text of every run stays on-device even when you sign in for sync. If the model account being yours is what matters to you, read the privacy posture and how documents are handled next: those cover the other half of the question, which is what leaves your machine in the first place.
Common questions
Which AI providers can I bring a key for?
Two: Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI. You pick one at a time in Settings, paste the key, and press Test before saving so you find out immediately whether the key works. Khint pins a sensible default model per provider rather than exposing a model list, so there's nothing else to configure. Switching provider later is just picking the other one and pasting a new key.
Does my API key leave my machine?
It's stored on your device, in the operating system keychain (Keychain on macOS, Credential Vault on Windows), never in a plain settings file. It's not stored on Khint's servers. On each run it does travel with the request: the desktop app attaches it, Khint's backend swaps it in for its own key and forwards the call to your provider over TLS, without logging or keeping it. That round trip is the honest trade-off to know about before you choose this over a purely local setup.
What still uses Khint credits when I bring my own key?
Your agent runs, the inline steps of an idea-bar request and in-place document edits run on your key and aren't metered by Khint at all: your provider bills those tokens. Capture runs on your key with either provider. A few things stay on Khint's managed backend by design: the Memory working state and recaps, long-document summaries, the Generate and Improve buttons in the agent editor, and voice dictation. PowerPoint diagram generation needs a higher-tier engine, so it runs on your key only when that key is from Anthropic. The Lifetime plan carries a 300 credit monthly allowance that covers the rest.
Do I need a specific plan to use my own key?
Yes. Bring-your-own-key is what the Khint Lifetime plan is: one payment of 349 euros as a launch offer running to 30 September 2026, then your own provider key does the work. The monthly plans (Free, Lite, Pro, Max) work the other way round: no key to manage, and every run draws on a shared monthly credit wallet. Both give you the same agents, workflows, Capture and Memory.
Try it before you bring a key
Free with 300 credits a month, about 10 AI actions a day. No credit card. Move to Lifetime when you want your own key doing the work.