The Cellar Schematic uses AI to read your wine labels, answer questions about your collection, and fill in what an imported cellar arrives without. Those features run on your own OpenAI key — a short, one-time setup. This page shows you how, in about five minutes.

Why your own key

Most apps that use AI charge you a monthly subscription and keep the arrangement to themselves. We'd rather you owned it.

You pay for what you use, and nothing else. A label scan or a question to the Sommelier costs a fraction of a cent. Most people spend well under a dollar a month, and if you don't use the AI features, you pay nothing at all.

Your key stays on your device. On iPhone and iPad it's held in the iOS Keychain. On Android it's encrypted with a key held in the Android Keystore — hardware-backed on devices that provide it. Either way it never leaves your device except to talk to OpenAI, it's never synced between devices, and it never reaches us. We don't hold it, can't see it, and don't have a copy to lose.

Your cellar isn't ours to monetise. Nothing about your wines passes through our servers. The app talks to OpenAI directly, on your account, under your control.

You can end it in a moment. Revoke the key at OpenAI and the AI features simply stop. Everything else in the app carries on exactly as before.

What it costs

OpenAI bills you directly, for usage. To give you a sense of scale: scanning a label, asking the Sommelier what to open, or completing the details of an imported wine each cost a fraction of a cent. Looking up current market prices costs a little more — a few cents per wine — because each one is searched for individually, and the app tells you the estimated cost before it starts.

US$5 of credit lasts most people a very long time.

One thing worth knowing: a ChatGPT Plus subscription does not cover this. The API is billed separately. It's the single most common thing people trip over, and it catches almost everyone the first time.

Watch it done

Recorded August 2026. OpenAI occasionally changes the look of their site; the steps stay the same.

Or read it

1. Create an OpenAI account. Go to platform.openai.com and sign up or sign in. This is OpenAI's developer platform — separate from the ChatGPT app you may already use.

2. Add a small amount of credit. On the platform, open Settings → Billing and add credit. US$5 is plenty to start with.

3. Create your key. Open the API keys page, choose "Create new secret key", name it "The Cellar Schematic", and create it. Copy it straight away — OpenAI shows it only once.

4. Paste it into the app. In The Cellar Schematic, go to Settings → OpenAI API Key, paste, and tap Save.

The app checks the key for you the moment you save it, and tells you exactly what it found — whether it's working, whether the account still needs credit, or whether the key didn't come across in one piece. You'll know straight away, rather than finding out later.

If something doesn't look right

Open Settings → OpenAI API Key and tap Check my key. It'll tell you which of these it is:

• Working — you're set; the AI features are ready.

• No credit yet — the key is fine, the account just needs topping up. (This is usually the ChatGPT Plus mix-up.)

• Not recognised — the key didn't arrive in full. Keys are long and begin sk-; copy the whole thing and paste it again.

• Couldn't be reached — a connection problem rather than a key problem. Try again when you're back online.

Still stuck? Email us at support@thecellarschematic and we'll sort it out with you.

What works without a key

Everything that isn't AI. You can add wines by hand, organise your cellar, lay out your racks and fridges in the Plans, draw and share your Cellar Schematic, keep your wine log, and back up and restore — all without a key, and all without any AI involved.

The key adds the label reading, the Virtual Sommelier, the Virtual Concierge, price lookups, and the tools that complete an imported cellar.