AI Providers Overview

Aori is bring-your-own-key. You choose the AI provider, enter your key in Aori, and Aori sends requests directly from your device to that provider.

Aori has no cloud backend for app data. Cloud providers still receive the prompt, conversation context, files, memory snippets, or Skill results needed for the request you ask them to handle.

Providers

Provider	Best for	Platform notes	Setup
Groq	Fast free-start setup	Cloud provider	Groq setup
OpenAI	Broad model capability	Cloud provider	OpenAI setup
Anthropic	Strong writing and reasoning	Cloud provider	Anthropic setup
Gemini	Google models and multimodal work	Cloud provider	Gemini setup
DeepSeek	Cost-efficient reasoning	Cloud provider	DeepSeek setup
OpenRouter	Many models through one account	Cloud provider	OpenRouter setup
Ollama	Local desktop models	Desktop only; requires a running Ollama server	Ollama setup

Recommendations

• Start with Groq if you want the quickest free setup.
• Use Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini for higher-capability cloud models.
• Use DeepSeek or OpenRouter when cost or model variety matters.
• Use Ollama only on desktop when you already want to run local models yourself.

Switching Providers

1. Open Settings -> AI Models.
2. Add or test a provider key.
3. Select the provider and model you want Aori to use.

Your local conversations, settings, and memory stay in Aori when you switch providers. Future requests are sent to the currently selected provider.

Data Flow

When Aori uses a cloud provider, that provider receives the data needed to answer your request. This can include your message, relevant conversation history, selected memory context, file snippets, Notion or Google results, and tool outputs.

Ollama requests handled by your local Ollama server stay on your desktop for that model call, but other enabled cloud features can still send data to their providers.