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The Curator and your key

The Curator writes a title, a description and tags for each item, files it in one of your collections, and reads the text visible in the picture. It runs on an AI key you own. Everything else in Teserra works without it.

Written from Teserra 1.3.16 · Markdown ·

In short

  1. Open Settings›Add-ons›Curator and Add key.
  2. Test connection, then save.
  3. Turn on Curate automatically, or catalog the rest from File → Curator…

Why your own key

Vision models cost money per image. Rather than hide that in a subscription, Teserra uses your account with the provider you choose, so you stay in control of the bill and of which provider sees your images. With OpenAI's mini models, cataloging costs roughly 1 to 2 dollars per 1,000 images, once.

Settings, Add-ons, Curator: what the Curator does, an empty API key field, the endpoint and model fields, and the note that mini models cost roughly 1 to 2 dollars per 1,000 images.
The Curator runs on your own key: with OpenAI's mini models, roughly 1 to 2 dollars per 1,000 images, once.

Set it up

Settings, Add-ons: four cards, Links, Articles, Visual search and Curator, each with its switch, an object in an arch and what it does.
Settings → Add-ons
  1. Get an API key from your provider. Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint works; the default is OpenAI.
  2. Settings → Add-ons → Curator → Add key. Paste the key, pick a model if you want another than the default. It must read images.
  3. Test connection makes one minimal call with what you typed, before saving. You get “Connected” with the model and its response time, or the exact reason: key refused, model or endpoint not found, quota or credit, host unreachable.
  4. Turn on Curate automatically, off by default, if you want every import, capture and clip cataloged in the background.

The Curator desk

File → Curator… shows what is cataloged and what is missing a title or tags, with Fix to catalog the rest and results streaming in as they land. Re-catalog everything starts over. Under Ideas from the Curator, Suggest collections proposes groups from the tags you already have.

The Curator window before a run: 745 of 770 items cataloged, 25 to catalog, 49 without tags, 28 without title, and a Catalog 25 items button.
Before it runs, the Curator shows what is left to catalog and what it can fix.

From a selection. Select several items and, when some of them have no tags, the right panel says “8 of 12 have no tags” with a Catalog them button: the Curator runs on those only.

What is sent, and what is not

  • Sent to your provider, under your key and their terms: a small version of the image being cataloged, with the names of your collections so the Curator can file it. To keep the text index behind search, each cataloged item's text: title, description, tags, filename, visible text, collection names, site and camera. Suggest collections sends your tag names with their counts.
  • Never sent: your originals at full size, your other files, anything while no key is saved.
  • Visual search, Find Similar and Constellation run on a model on your Mac and do not use the key, as long as Visual search is installed.

No key

Without a key you still get thumbnails, collections, tags you write yourself, search by filename and, with Visual search, by meaning. Titles, descriptions and the text inside pictures can come from your agent instead: with Agent access on, Claude Code or any MCP client catalogs your pictures with its own vision, on your own AI plan, and Teserra needs no key. Agent access

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