Confused about the best way to provide an OpenAI api key

[Martinsos]

Hi there, thanks for this awesome package!

I am just setting it up, and I wanted to start with using GPT as a model. When looking at docs in the readme, for setting up ChatGPT, they say to procure the OpenAI API key, which makes sense, but then the only other thing is "Optional: set gptel-api-key" and two bullet points below it. This confused me, due to the "Optional" part -> I assumed this means that it can work without this, probably pulling it in directly from the OPENAI_API_KEY env var. But it seems like that is not happening. It did ask me interactively for the GPT API Key, but that lasted only for the current emacs session. So what is the recommended way to do it? Thanks!

[tillydray]

One of the best ways to handle secrets in emacs, in general, is authinfo.gpg. You create ~/.authinfo.gpg on your computer, then add a line for each secret you want. It's outlined in the readme here

[karthink]

You can put

(setq gptel-api-key "sk-blahblabblah...")

in your gptel configuration. But then the key will be visible in your config, which is unsafe.

Instead, you can do

(setq gptel-api-key (getenv "OPENAI_API_KEY"))

and make sure that this environment variable is available to Emacs.

If your API keys are stored in a password manager of some kind, you can do

(setq gptel-api-key (lambda () (shell-command-to-string "my-password-get api.openai.com")))

where my-password-get is a shell command that retrieves your passwords.

But the best way to do it would be to use the .authinfo.gpg file as explained by @tillydray.