electron-ai-key-silent-fail

name	electron-ai-key-silent-fail
description	Diagnose when AI features silently return 'Offline' or 'no API key' despite valid settings
source	auto-skill
extracted_at	2026-06-06T10:38:00.000Z

AI silently failing despite valid API key

Symptom

AI features (transforms, chat, OCR) return "[Offline] Cannot transform X → Y without an AI key" or similar, even though Settings shows a valid API key and the provider appears "Active" in the sidebar.

Root cause

The openai npm package is not installed. Electron's electron/ai.js does:

try {
  const { OpenAI } = require('openai')
  _client = new OpenAI({ apiKey, baseURL })
} catch {
  return null  // SILENT FAILURE
}

The require('openai') throws because the package isn't in package.json. The try/catch silently returns null, which makes every AI call fall through to the offline/error path.

Fix

npm install openai

Then restart the Electron app (not just Vite HMR — the main process needs a full restart).

How to verify

Check if openai is in package.json dependencies. If missing, it's the cause. All providers (OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Groq, Ollama, OpenRouter, DashScope, Custom) use the OpenAI-compatible client, so this single package affects everything.