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Overview

RecordEngine supports five AI providers, all configurable from Settings → AI Backend without any code changes or server restarts required.
ProviderTypeBest For
Local (Ollama)On-premiseMaximum privacy, air-gapped deployments
OpenAICloud BYOKHigh accuracy, proven reliability
Claude (Anthropic)Cloud BYOKMultilingual, nuanced reasoning
Qwen APICloud BYOKChinese documents
Gemini (Google)Cloud BYOKBest cost/performance ratio

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Switching Providers

  1. Go to Settings → AI Backend
  2. Select a provider from the dropdown
  3. Enter your API key (cloud providers only)
  4. Click 💾 Save
  5. Click 🧪 Test Connection to verify
API keys are stored locally in the RecordEngine database on your server. They are never transmitted anywhere except to the selected AI provider.

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Provider Details

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Local (Ollama)

Fully offline inference on your GPU. No API key required. No data leaves your network. Default models:
TaskModel
Extraction / structured outputqwen3.5:9b
Vision / OCRqwen3.5:9b
Chatqwen3.5:9b
Requirements: GPU instance with NVIDIA drivers and Ollama installed. The deploy script handles this automatically for GPU-mode deployments. Processing modes:
  • Precise — uses qwen3.5:27b for text tasks (higher accuracy, slower)
  • Fast — uses qwen3.5:9b for all tasks (default, recommended)

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OpenAI

Default model: gpt-4o
API key: Get yours at platform.openai.com
Pricing: ~2.50/1Minputtokens,2.50 / 1M input tokens, 10.00 / 1M output tokens GPT-4o handles vision and structured extraction with high accuracy. This is the recommended provider for GPU-mode pilots.

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Claude (Anthropic)

Default model: claude-sonnet-4-5
API key: Get yours at console.anthropic.com
Pricing: ~3.00/1Minputtokens,3.00 / 1M input tokens, 15.00 / 1M output tokens Strong at multilingual documents including Chinese text and nuanced reasoning for AI chat.

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Qwen API

Default models: qwen-max (text), qwen-vl-max (vision)
API key: Get yours at dashscope.aliyun.com
Pricing: ~$0.50 / 1M input tokens Best performance on Chinese-language documents. Uses Alibaba’s DashScope infrastructure — note this for security-conscious prospects even though data stays within Alibaba Cloud.

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Gemini (Google)

Default model: gemini-2.5-flash-preview-04-17
API key: Get yours at aistudio.google.com
Pricing: ~0.30/1Minputtokens,0.30 / 1M input tokens, 2.50 / 1M output tokens Recommended for API-mode (BYOK) deployments where cost efficiency matters. Gemini delivers extraction quality comparable to GPT-4o at approximately 5x lower cost. Excellent OCR performance on handwritten and complex document layouts. To use Gemini 3 Flash, enter gemini-3-flash-preview in the model override field.

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Model Override

To use a specific model instead of the provider default:
  1. Go to Settings → AI Backend
  2. Enter the model name in the Model override field
  3. Save
Examples:
  • OpenAI: gpt-4o-mini (cheaper, lower accuracy)
  • Claude: claude-haiku-4-5 (faster, cheaper)
  • Gemini: gemini-3-flash-preview (latest generation)
Leave the field blank to use the provider default.

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Fallback to Local

When a cloud provider is configured, you can enable automatic fallback to your local GPU if the cloud API is unavailable:
  1. Enable Fallback to Local GPU if cloud is unavailable in Settings → AI Backend
  2. Save
This requires a GPU instance with Ollama running. Not applicable to API-mode deployments.

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Architecture

All AI calls are routed through app/ai_router.py. The three public functions are: 
ai_router.ai_generate(task, prompt)        # structured extraction, summaries
ai_router.ai_vision(image_path, prompt)    # OCR, image analysis
ai_router.ai_chat(messages, system_prompt) # multi-turn document chat
Provider selection and API keys are read from the database on every call — no restart required when switching providers. Retry logic: All cloud calls use 3-attempt retry with 2-second delay. Authentication errors (401/403) skip retry immediately.

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Per-Provider API Key Storage

Each provider’s key is stored independently:
Setting keyProvider
ai_api_key_openaiOpenAI
ai_api_key_claudeClaude
ai_api_key_qwen_apiQwen API
ai_api_key_geminiGemini
Switching providers never overwrites another provider’s key.