AI features and your own keys

Most of Frame Job needs no key and no network. The few features that send your words or audio to a cloud model run on your own API keys, so you decide what’s used and you pay the provider directly.

Menu: Frame Job ▸ Settings…
Keys: ⌘,
Where: Settings ▸ AssistantSettings ▸ Transcription
Needs: Your own Anthropic or AssemblyAI key, only for the features that send to them.
Agent tools: transcribetranscribe_for_fillers

Your own keys

There’s no Frame Job account and no relay in between. There are two keys in all, and each provider bills your account directly.

Key	Turns on	Saved in
Anthropic	The Assistant	Settings ▸ Assistant
AssemblyAI	Cloud captions and Remove Filler Words	Settings ▸ Transcription

Frame Job shows its own estimate of what each Assistant turn and each month costs. See What it costs. The provider’s bill is the real figure.

With no key set, Settings says “No API key is set.” in its ordinary muted colour. That only means there’s no key yet, and it isn’t an error.

What needs what

Anything that sends your words or audio to a language or cloud model needs your own key. Everything that runs on your Mac needs none.

What it takes	Features
Nothing	Editing, colour, graphics, recording, export, Split at Shot Changes, and connecting an MCP client, which brings its own model
An on-device model, with no key and no upload	Generate Captions with On this Mac, Remove Silences’ voice analysis, Enhance Voice and Voice Isolation, Remove Background, Follow Subject, Make Vertical Version and Switch by Speaker
Your AssemblyAI key	The AssemblyAI engine of File ▸ Generate Captions…, and Clip ▸ Remove Filler Words… with its Transcribe buttons
Your Anthropic key	The Assistant

Filler removal works only through AssemblyAI. There’s no on-device version.

Without your Anthropic key, View ▸ Assistant still opens the tab, which says how to add the key.

Work you’ve already paid for keeps working with no key:

Generate isn’t greyed when every file is already transcribed.
Remove Filler Words… stays on while a file it would work on has a current transcript made with filler words.

An on-device language that isn’t installed yet shows a Download row in the Generate Captions sheet.

Greyed commands

A command that needs a key you haven’t set is greyed rather than hidden, and it says which key and where to set it.

A greyed menu item’s title gains the key’s name, as in Remove Filler Words… (needs your AssemblyAI key). Rest the pointer on a greyed command or button and it reads:

No AssemblyAI API key is set. Set one in Frame Job ▸ Settings… ▸ Transcription.

For the Assistant it’s the same sentence with Anthropic and Assistant. The Assistant tab itself reads “Add your Anthropic API key in Settings to use the assistant.” with an Open Settings… button.

An agent’s tool stops with the same sentence, at the point it would send. See Transcripts for filler words for what still works without a key.

Saving a key takes effect at once

Saving or removing a key updates open sheets and menu items straight away. An open Generate Captions sheet turns Generate back on with the sheet still up, and there’s nothing to reopen or relaunch.

What stays on this Mac

Editing, analysis, on-device transcription, recording and export all stay on this Mac. Only these reach the network, and each is something you start or can see:

Goes to	What	When
AssemblyAI	The audio of the files being transcribed	When you press Generate or Transcribe with that engine. Verify in Settings also makes a small request with your key, with no audio. See What goes to AssemblyAI.
Anthropic	Your Assistant messages, the project’s details and the frames it renders	While you use the Assistant. See Assistant privacy.
GitHub	A request for LiteLLM’s published price table, which the cost estimates use, with no key and no project data	At most once a day, from the Assistant’s helper
GitHub	A check of the update feed, and the update itself when you choose to install one	In the downloaded copy only, when you check or if you allowed automatic checks
macOS’s own download	An on-device speech model	When you ask for one

Frame Job has no analytics or telemetry code.