Settings - Providers
Dashboardx Designer does not have an AI account of its own. You bring an API key from a model provider, paste it once, and every agent in the app runs on it.
Open this dialog
Open Settings from the app menu — Dashboardx Designer → Settings on macOS, Settings on Windows, or press ⌘, (Ctrl+, on Windows) — and select Providers under AI & Agent.
Supported providers
The app ships with the providers whose models are tuned for tool-driven, structured work:
| Provider | Models available |
|---|---|
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek V4 Pro, DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| 智谱 GLM (Zhipu) | GLM-5.3, GLM-5.3-Flash |
| 阿里云百炼 (Alibaba Cloud Model Studio) | Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.8-Flash |
Provider availability is reviewed at every release, so the list can gain or drop an entry between versions. Providers that are not listed here are not currently selectable in the app.
Adding a key
Each provider is a collapsible section:
- Expand the provider.
- Paste your API Key into the masked field.
- Leave the field. The app quietly sends one tiny test request and marks the field with a check, or reports Verification failed if the key or the endpoint is wrong.
The Base URL is prefilled with the provider's standard endpoint. Change it only if you are routing through your own gateway.
Some providers expose a Region choice when their endpoint differs by region — pick the one matching where your account was opened. A wrong region shows up as a verification failure, not a silent fallback.
You only need one provider configured to use the app.
Verification is on the field, not a button
There is no separate Verify button — verification runs when you leave the API key field, so a green check is always current. A failed verification keeps your key in place so you can correct the endpoint or region and try again.
Until a provider verifies, it does not appear in the model selector.
Where keys are stored
Your API key is encrypted by your operating system's secure store — the macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager before it touches the disk. It is never written to your dashboard files, and it is never sent anywhere except the endpoint you configured.
Two consequences worth knowing:
- Moving to another Mac, or restoring under a different user account, invalidates the stored key. Re-enter it once on the new machine.
- If your account has no keychain available, the app falls back to storing the key unprotected and says so rather than failing silently.
Removing a key
Clear the field. Conversations that were using that provider fall back to the model configured in Settings → Agent, and you are told in the conversation that the fallback happened.
Custom endpoints
The built-in providers accept a custom Base URL, which covers the common case of routing an existing provider through your own gateway. A UI for registering entirely new providers is not available in this release.