Getting started with Redrob, without writing any code

Redrob is an AI service you use through applications, and Console is the part of it you are looking at: where you pay, where you can see what has been spent, and where you decide who on your team is allowed to spend it.

One balance covers everything. You are not buying a seat in a particular application or a subscription to one product; you are buying credit that any Redrob product draws from.

• CodeAvailable nowCoding help in your terminal, in the language you write in. Installs with one command on macOS, Linux and Windows.
• CoworkAvailable nowA desktop workspace for repeatable team tasks, shared prompts and connected tools. Stable Windows, macOS and Linux builds are available now.

Each of those names links to a page about that product, which says what it is and what state it is actually in.

Redrob is prepaid, which is the whole of the pricing. There is no monthly fee, no plan to choose, no per-seat charge, and nothing expires.

There is also no free trial and no welcome credit. A new workspace starts at zero and the first thing it does is pay. We would rather say that outright than advertise a trial and then take it away, and requiring a real payment is what keeps accounts created in bulk from being worth creating.

Paying is one screen. Pick an amount, and Stripe shows the payment methods available where you are, which can include Apple Pay, Google Pay, Kakao Pay and Naver Pay as well as a card. The amounts are labelled with roughly how many conversations they buy, which is an estimate: a long answer costs more than a short one, and the usage page always shows what you actually spent.

When the balance reaches zero, requests are refused. They are not queued and they are not billed, so a workspace you forget about cannot run up a bill. Automatic top-up will charge your saved card when the balance falls below a threshold you set, and it is off until you turn it on.

This part is built. An application shows you a short code, you approve that code here, and Console issues that machine a workspace API key. Nobody copies a secret out of a page: the key goes straight to the application, and the confirm page never shows it.

Redrob Cowork, Design, Browser and Code all have the connect step built, and all four have something published. Code installs from a command on /code. Work and Design are Linux x64 builds you download from their own pages, and Browser is an extension zip you load into Chrome yourself. Connecting any of them is the step described above and nothing else.

Redrob Office is the one that does not do this yet. It is published, and it takes a workspace API key you issue in Console and paste into it on first run, so there is no code to approve for it. When it gains the step, its own page and this paragraph will say so.

Approving creates one ordinary key. It appears in your key list named after the application and the day it was approved, its usage is billed to this workspace like any other, and revoking it there stops that application. A code lasts ten minutes and can be approved once. Approving adds no credit.

Credit bought now is not tied to any one of them. It does not expire, and it is the same balance every application draws from, so paying today is not paying early for one product.

Redrob Code is the one that installs from a command rather than a file, from its page at /code. The page shows the command for the machine you are reading it on: a shell one-liner on macOS and Linux, and a PowerShell one on Windows, which is a separate installer rather than the same script renamed. Either one fetches the build, checks it against the published checksum, and installs one file on your PATH, under both of its names: the command you run is "redrob", and "redrob-code" is the same file under the name the build carries. Code connects the same way as the rest, from a terminal rather than a button: run "redrob providers login --provider redrob" and choose "Connect Redrob", or open the /connect dialog inside a running session. It prints a short code, opens the confirm page here, and collects the key you approve. Pasting a key still works, and is what to use when the machine cannot reach Console: choose the paste option, or set REDROB_API_KEY in its environment.

Two pages, and they agree with each other because they are built from the same rows.

Usage totals the cost per day, so you can see whether spending is steady or climbing. Logs lists one row per request with what it cost, so a figure you do not recognise can be traced to the request that caused it. Prompts are masked in the log.

The credit page also lists every movement of the balance: each payment, each deduction, and the balance after it.

Doing nothing already stops it. Spending only happens when a request is made, and it stops on its own when the balance runs out.

To make sure of it: turn automatic top-up off on the credit page, so nothing recharges the balance without you. Removing your saved card in the Stripe portal has the same effect. There is no subscription to cancel, because there was never one to start.

If several people share the workspace, roles are the sharper tool: a viewer can read the usage but cannot spend, and only an admin can pay or change automatic top-up. That is set per member on the team page.

For a charge you do not recognise, start with the log: it names the request behind every deduction, which is usually the answer. If it is not, or if you need to be invoiced rather than pay by card, contact us and include your workspace name.

Contact the Redrob team

Everything above is the same for you; this is the extra part. The API speaks the OpenAI chat completions protocol, so the official SDKs work against it with a base URL and an API key, and keys are issued and revoked in Console.