Providers & models

A provider is the AI service that does the actual thinking for your workers — and askTheodor lets you mix several, picking the right brain for each job.

What you’ll learn

• The kinds of providers you can connect.
• How to give each worker its own model.
• Why local models are free and private.

Connect a provider

1. Open Settings → Providers (the tab Settings opens on by default).
2. Connect at least one — paste an API key for a cloud provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and others), or point at a local runner (Ollama, LM Studio). There’s also a zero-setup Built-in model that always works.
3. A few seconds after you paste a key, the app quietly health-checks it and shows ✓ Working — you don’t press anything.

Beyond the headline backends, the provider directory reaches far wider — on the order of 49 providers you can wire up.

A model per worker

Each worker has its own brain — set on the worker, not globally. So the same profession can be a frontier-model strategist or a cheap-model clerk depending on the model you give it. Mix freely: a top model for the thinker, a lean one for routine clerks.

Local models: free and private

Run Ollama or LM Studio and there’s no per-use cost and nothing leaves your machine. Perfect for routine or sensitive work; keep a cloud key for the heavy lifting.

Keys stay on your machine

API keys are stored only locally, under your app-data folder — they never go to askTheodor’s servers. Treat a key like a password all the same.

Recap

You connected a provider, learned that every worker carries its own model, and saw that local runners are free and fully private. That rounds out the Connect track: local MCP, hosted connectors, one-time OAuth sign-in, and the brains behind it all.

➡️ Next: Back to the curriculum →