What is the access key?
When you click Edit with AI, bernard shows you a prompt to paste into your AI — and inside it is an access key. It's worth knowing exactly what that key is, because its limits are the reason the whole arrangement is safe.
What the key does — and doesn't — allow
The key lets your AI read your site's pages and write changes to a draft. That's the whole list. It is scoped to one site — yours — and expires 12 hours after it was created. It cannot publish: the live site only changes when you press Approve on the preview page, signed in to your bernard account, and there is no key of any kind that bypasses that.
Only one key is active per site at a time. Clicking Edit with AI again mints a fresh key and the old one stops working immediately — so if you ever paste a key somewhere you regret, re-minting revokes it on the spot. Usage is capped at 60 requests per minute and 1,000 writes per day, generous enough that a real editing session never notices.
The prompt
“Explain what you can and can't do on my site with the access key I've given you — and what happens when it expires.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Log in to bernard → your site → Edit with AI → copy your access prompt, paste that into your AI first, then ask the above.
Questions people ask
- What is the access key bernard gives my AI?
- It's a temporary key, shown when you click Edit with AI, that lets your AI read and edit drafts of your site. It works for 12 hours, covers one site only, and can never publish — only you can do that, by pressing Approve.
- What happens when the key expires?
- The AI simply can't make any more edits — it will ask you for a fresh key. Nothing is lost: any draft it was working on is safe and waiting, and you get a new key by clicking Edit with AI again.
- What if someone else gets hold of my key?
- They could edit a draft of that one site for at most 12 hours — but they couldn't publish anything, because going live always needs you to press Approve, signed in to your account. Minting a new key from Edit with AI replaces the old one instantly, which also works as a kill switch.
- Are there limits on what the AI can do with the key?
- Yes — fair-usage limits of 60 requests per minute and 1,000 writes per day per site. A long, productive editing session uses a small fraction of that; the caps exist to stop a malfunctioning agent looping, not to meter your enthusiasm.