Introducing Managed AI Connectors: Build with AI in Minutes, No API Keys Required

Creating AI-powered apps and tools usually starts with setup.

Pick a provider, create an account, generate API keys, store them securely, configure limits and billing… and you still haven’t built the app. For many teams, that “plumbing” takes days—sometimes weeks.

Today, we’re introducing Managed AI Connectors in Memex: a faster way to build AI apps without the usual setup. Instead of wiring up model providers yourself, you simply choose the model you want and Memex handles authentication and billing through your Memex AI credits.

In this post, we’ll walk through a real example: a Blog Studio app that uses Managed AI Connectors from OpenAI to draft the copy and Gemini Pro to generate images—using your team’s voice, templates, and reference assets from Google Drive.

Why Managed AI Connectors

Managed AI Connectors are designed to remove the hardest part of building with models: everything you have to do before you can even start iterating.

Here’s what they unlock:

1. No API keys, no setup: Choose your model and build. Memex takes care of authentication and billing behind the scenes—so you can skip key management, quotas, and provider-specific configuration.

2. A single workflow across models: Use the best model for each job in the same app—text with OpenAI, images with Gemini Pro, or other providers like Anthropic—without stitching together separate systems.

3. Secure by default: You don’t need to pass credentials around or maintain your own “secret sprawl.” Memex handles the provider side securely so you can focus on the workflow.

4. Custom apps in minutes: Managed AI Connectors pair with Memex’s app-building flow: you describe what you want, Memex generates the UI + backend, and your workflow is ready to use and share.

See them in action

In the walkthrough video below, we build a Blog Studio app end-to-end: topic in, a full blog post out—complete with images, without having to manage keys or billing with individual model providers.

Step-by-step walkthrough

1) Connect your AI models (Managed AI Connectors)

Go to Memex, select the model provider you want (like OpenAI for text or Gemini Pro for images via Nano Banana), and create a connection.

No API keys. No extra provider setup. Memex handles the underlying authentication and billing through Memex credits.

2) Connect your content source (Google Drive)

Next, connect Google Drive and point Memex at a folder that includes:

• a brand voice guide

• a blog template / structure doc

• reference images for visual style

These files give the app the context it needs to write and design in your house style.

3) Tell Memex what you want to build

Now describe the app you want. In our case, we asked for a Blog Studio app that:

• reads voice + formatting rules from Drive

• drafts a blog post using OpenAI

• includes two image placeholders with prompts

• generates those images using Nano Banana via Gemini Pro, using Google Drive reference images as style context

4) Memex builds the app (UI + backend + workflow)

Wait a couple of minutes while Memex generates the full app: the UI, the backend logic, and the workflow wiring, ready to use.

And because Memex generates an actual UI and backend, you can share this app with your team—not just the output.

5) Inside the app: generate a draft

Now everything happens inside the app.

Enter a topic (for example: “the future of space travel”) and click Generate Draft.

The copy is generated using the OpenAI Managed AI Connector—again, no API keys or additional configuration.

6) Inside the app: generate images with Gemini Pro

The draft comes back structured, with two image slots: a hero image at the top and an in-article image midway through

Each slot includes a pre-filled image prompt.

Click Generate Images and the app switches to the Gemini Pro Managed AI Connector, using:

• the image prompts from the draft

• your Google Drive reference images to match the visual style

The app generates the images and fills the placeholders automatically.

7) Publish, export, or share

At this point, the workflow isn’t just “done once”—it’s now a real app.

That means you can:

• keep the same Google Drive-backed voice + template + style references,

• let anyone on your team enter a topic,

• and have the app generate a complete post with images the same way, every time.

Instead of copying prompts around or relying on one person to run the process, you can share the app and turn it into a repeatable content pipeline.

Why this matters

The speed unlock here isn’t “AI writes content.” It’s removing everything that slows teams down when they try to build reliable AI workflows:

• no key management

• no separate provider billing setup

• no glue code to stitch models into an app

• no one-off prompts that can’t be reused by a team

Managed AI Connectors make it practical to build real AI apps quickly—especially when combined with Memex’s data connectors, real backends, and shareable private apps.

Start building today

This was a Blog Studio example, but the same pattern applies across workflows:

• a customer support triage copilot

• a sales lead qualifier

• a customer brief generator

• an internal research assistant

• a custom tool your team uses every day

Start building your apps now: https://memex.tech/