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Bring Your Own Key for Managed Judgments

A workspace can bring its own judgment engine key instead of using the platform's managed key. Manage it from AI providers, in the workspace settings console.

  • the key is stored through SchemaBounce's managed secret boundary, the same one the LLM provider keys use;
  • the browser and hosted MCP never receive the saved key back;
  • key lookup is scoped to one workspace;
  • calls made on a workspace's own key are never charged to the workspace's wallet and carry no markup;
  • the settings API reports only the credential mode (byok), never the key, a fingerprint, a provider account, or a model identifier.

Save, verify, and status​

Saving a key runs an immediate verification call against the judgment engine. The status is always one of:

  • Verified: the key is on file and usable.
  • Key rejected: the key is on file but the engine did not accept it. The saved value stays exactly as submitted; nothing is silently replaced or dropped.
  • Not configured: no key is on file for this workspace.

A key can be re-verified at any time, replaced, or deleted. A deleted key is recoverable for 30 days, after which judgment calls in the workspace fall back to the platform key.

Rejected and unusable keys never fall back silently​

A key that saved but was rejected, or a key the engine could not reach during verification, is recorded unusable. An unusable key never causes a silent fallback to the platform key. Any feature that needs a judgment call runs its deterministic rules only and reports why the judgment stage was unavailable. Sensitive-column detection is the clearest example: a workspace with an unusable key still gets rule-based findings, and the scan result says the judgment stage did not run.

Availability​

Bring-your-own-key is gated by the same production kill switch as sensitive-column detection during the private preview: it stays off in production until the vendor leaves closed beta and terms are agreed. It does not give an agent more access, permit new data classes, or bypass a human approval; it changes only who supplies the inference credential.