You have built against the sandbox and it works. Here is what changes when you move to a live API key, and how to get one.
When it is time
Move to a key when you need any of these:
- to size against a real customer's interval data rather than a demo profile
- tariffs that are private to your organization
- ZIP or state tariff lookup
- your calls attributed to your organization
If none of those apply yet, stay in sandbox. It is not a trial and it does not expire.
What changes in your code
One header.
claude mcp add --transport http wattchop https://mcp.wattchop.com/mcp \
--header "X-Api-Key: $WC_API_KEY"Every tool call stays exactly as it was. The environment: "sandbox" marker stops appearing on your results, which is how you confirm the key landed.
Requesting one
Email support@wattchop.com with:
- your organization name
- what you are building, in a sentence
- whether you will be uploading customer interval data
Keys are issued per organization. You will get the key value once, at issue time — store it somewhere durable immediately, because it is not retrievable afterwards.
Handling it
- Keep it in an environment variable or a secret manager. Never commit it.
- It goes in the
X-Api-Keyheader and nowhere else. - Ask for a second key rather than sharing one across environments. Separate
keys mean your staging traffic is separable from production in your usage.
- If a key is exposed, say so and request a rotation. Rotation issues a
successor and leaves the old key working during a short overlap, so you are not forced into an outage to stay safe.
What sizing runs leave behind
A sizing call against your own data creates a run record on your organization, including the interval data the run was priced against. If you are running large volumes of exploratory sizing, tell us — retention is something we set per partner, not something you have to manage from your side.
Still stuck
docs_search(query="...") from your agent, or support@wattchop.com.