Connect an AI Provider

Provider ownership

SophMate uses provider credentials configured inside WordPress. Decide whether the site owner, agency, or operations lead owns those credentials before entering a key. Provider keys should never appear in prompts, screenshots, support messages, changelog entries, or customer-facing docs.

Connection test

Open SophMate settings, choose the provider, save the credential, and run the connection test. If the test fails, compare the error with the diagnostics and support docs before changing plugin settings repeatedly. The provider setup tutorial covers the first successful request and the checks that prove the site can reach the provider.

Budget controls

Before broad rollout, set usage caps and decide who can change them. The AI budget tutorial is the operational companion for teams that need provider usage controls across administrators, marketers, and support users.

Quick reference

• Use this page when changing provider, budget, role, mail, queue, cron, source, cache, or WooCommerce context settings.
• Do not store secrets, credentials, purchase codes, or private customer data in documentation notes or screenshots.
• Key decision: whether provider access, data handling, fallback behavior, and credential ownership are safe for the workflows being enabled.

Scope limits

• Do not use this page to approve a provider for sensitive data without reviewing provider policy, billing owner, fallback behavior, and key rotation responsibilities.
• This page does not replace provider, host, mail, billing, security, or legal policy review where those owners are responsible.
• Use it to frame configuration decisions, not to store secrets or justify broad access.

Owner and cadence

• Primary owner: site administrator with provider, billing, and security responsibility.
• Review cadence: after provider, mailbox, role, budget, security, WooCommerce, or integration changes.
• Escalate when a setting grants high-risk access, changes provider spend, weakens privacy posture, or redirects alerts away from monitored owners.

Access and data boundary

• Provider evidence should include account owner, model access, billing state, rate limits, fallback owner, and policy decision without exposing API keys.
• Restrict provider keys, billing, budgets, roles, mail routing, queues, cron, cache, and integration settings to accountable administrators.
• Document setting intent and validation results without storing API keys, mailbox passwords, purchase codes, raw logs, or private customer records.

Production checklist

• Use a provider key created for this site or client account, then store ownership and billing responsibility in launch notes.
• Test provider connectivity before changing budgets, roles, workflows, or agents.
• Document who owns provider credentials, budget limits, role access, notification routing, and ongoing review.
• Keep configuration changes behind administrator access and review them after plugin updates, staff changes, or incidents.

Acceptance checks

• A successful provider test is visible before users ask production questions.
• Credential ownership, rotation, and billing escalation are documented.
• A second administrator can explain why each high-risk setting is enabled and who may change it.
• No production credential, support mailbox, or notification path depends on an unmanaged personal account.

Failure modes to test

• Test invalid keys, revoked keys, missing billing, model denial, rate limits, fallback provider failure, and provider-policy mismatch.
• Test invalid credentials, exhausted budget, unmonitored mailbox, wrong role mapping, queue delay, cron failure, and cache-dependent behavior.
• Confirm configuration failures are visible to an owner without exposing provider keys, mailbox credentials, or raw logs.

Evidence to capture

• Capture provider account owner, allowed model, billing state, rate limits, data-handling decision, and fallback owner without storing API keys.
• Record changed setting, previous value category, new value category, owner, approval reason, and review date without storing secrets.
• Capture provider, budget, role, mailbox, queue, cron, cache, and WooCommerce evidence relevant to the setting being changed.

Decision record

• Decision field to include: provider account owner, allowed model, billing or quota state, fallback owner, key rotation status, and data-handling approval.
• Record the configuration decision, setting owner, previous setting category, new setting category, validation result, approval reason, and next review date.
• Include whether the change affects provider spend, privacy, mail delivery, queue or cron behavior, WooCommerce context, or user permissions.

Stop or rollback path

Pause provider-dependent workflows when credentials, billing, rate limits, model access, data handling, or fallback behavior are unclear. Resume after diagnostics pass and affected workflows have an owner-approved restart note.

Monitoring window

• Monitor the next operating cycle for unexpected spend, blocked work, missed notifications, queue delays, or changed provider behavior.
• Compare the setting change against audit records, diagnostics, and user reports before making another related change.

Expansion criteria

• Provider-dependent workflows can expand only after model access, billing, rate limits, data handling, and fallback behavior are accepted.
• Widen the setting change only after audit records, user reports, diagnostics, and cost or delivery signals match expectations.
• The owner can explain how to reverse or narrow the change without searching through unrelated settings.

Common mistakes

• Rotating keys repeatedly without checking billing, model access, PHP extensions, outbound HTTPS, and provider account state.
• Using personal provider keys, personal mailboxes, or broad administrator access because it is faster during setup.
• Changing budgets, roles, notifications, or integrations without recording the owner and review reason.

Common questions

Who should approve provider or credential changes?

A site administrator or provider owner should approve the change after model access, billing, data handling, fallback behavior, and affected workflows are understood.

Who should own this decision?

The site administrator should own the decision, with provider, billing, security, mail, or hosting owners involved when their systems are affected.

What should stop the rollout?

Stop when a setting changes spend, access, privacy, mail, queue, cron, cache, provider behavior, or WooCommerce behavior without validation evidence.

Related operations

• Troubleshoot failures with Troubleshoot Provider Connections.
• Control spend with Budget and Usage Controls.
• Pair configuration work with Roles and Permissions.
• Review Approval Controls before enabling write-capable modules.
• Use Cost Allocation and Client Billing Review before client or team billing reviews.
• Use Security and Key Rotation before changing provider credentials.
• Use Cache Queue and Performance before scaling workflows or alerts.
• Use Scheduled Task and Cron Reliability before relying on recurring work.