BYOK AI - Bring Your Own Key Chat

Chat with any model from a browser sidebar. Your API key, your models, no subscription.

A browser sidebar that lets you chat with any AI model available on OpenRouter, using your own API key. That's the whole pitch. No subscription, no account to create here, no monthly fee to me. You pay OpenRouter directly for what you use, and only what you use. I built this for myself. I was tired of switching tabs to talk to an AI while reading something, and the existing extensions either wanted a subscription or stored your key somewhere I couldn't verify. So I wrote one where your key never leaves your own browser's local storage. It goes directly from your machine to OpenRouter's API. Nothing routes through my servers because I don't have any servers. --- It is not made by OpenRouter This extension has no affiliation with OpenRouter. It's a third-party client that talks to their public API, the same way a desktop app might. OpenRouter is a separate company. You need your own account there to get a key. Get one at openrouter.ai/keys. --- What it actually does When you click the extension icon, a sidebar opens in your current Chrome window. From there you can pick a model, write a message, and get a response. It remembers your conversation within a session and saves the last 50 chats locally so you can come back to them. The model list loads from OpenRouter's API, so you get access to whatever they carry -- GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, and a lot more. You can star the ones you use most for a quick-switcher that sits at the top of the sidebar. The extension also shows input and output pricing per million tokens so you roughly know what a model costs before you start. --- Roles This is the part I use most. Roles let you define a system prompt (instructions for the model) and an optional prefix added to every message you send. Switching roles clears the current conversation and starts fresh with the new context. Three roles come pre-configured: - Page Assistant -- a general helper that uses whatever page content you share as its reference - Data Scraper -- extracts structured JSON from whatever page you're on. Identify the page type, pull the fields, return clean JSON. No prose, just data. - Briefing Agent -- produces a structured brief before a meeting or call. Who/what, their priorities, angles for the conversation, things to avoid, two concrete openers. Useful before a sales call or a job interview when you have a LinkedIn page or company site open. You can edit all three, delete them, or add your own. There's no limit. If you find yourself copy-pasting the same instruction at the start of every conversation, make it a role. --- Page context There's a toggle in the sidebar called ""Share page text as context."" When it's on, the visible text from whatever page you have open gets attached to your message before it's sent. The extension reads it with Chrome's scripting API, trims whitespace, caps it at 24,000 characters if the page is very long, and prepends it to your prompt. This is what makes the scraper and briefing roles actually useful. You open a product page, a job listing, someone's LinkedIn profile, or a news article, flip the toggle, and the model has the content without you copying and pasting anything. You can also click ""See page content"" to preview exactly what text would be sent before committing. It doesn't work on chrome:// pages or the Chrome Web Store itself, which is a browser restriction, not something I can change. --- Chat history All conversations save locally. The history page (a separate tab you can open from the sidebar) lets you search across the last 50 chats by content, model name, or role. You can preview any conversation, delete individual chats, or wipe everything. Nothing leaves your browser. --- Other things worth knowing The sidebar supports light and dark themes. You can adjust the text size from the settings page if the default is too small or too large. Markdown in assistant responses renders properly -- code blocks, tables, headers, links, all of it. There's a copy button on every message. The keyboard shortcut to open the sidebar is Ctrl+Shift+Y (Cmd+Shift+Y on Mac), if you'd rather not click the icon. --- What it doesn't do It doesn't have image upload, voice input, or any kind of plugin system. It's a text chat sidebar. --- Privacy Your API key is stored in chrome.storage.local. It goes directly to OpenRouter's API when you send a message. I have no backend, no analytics, no logging. The extension's only network calls are to openrouter.ai. Page text you share via the context toggle is sent to whatever model you've selected through OpenRouter. If you're on a page with sensitive information, check what you're sharing with ""See page content"" first. --- Why free Because I made it for myself, and packaging it up for other people didn't cost much. If it's useful to you, great. There's no upsell coming, no premium tier I'm building toward. It's just a tool. --- OpenRouter is a separate service with its own terms and pricing. This extension is an independent client. All API usage is billed directly by OpenRouter to your account."