Add More Free AI Providers for Studio Assistant

[Jaideep33227 (Jaideep)]

What problem are you trying to solve?

I really like the new Skills feature. It saves a lot of time when doing repetitive tasks.

For example, if I have a folder with 100 models and every model needs a Part added inside it, I can ask Assistant to do it instead of adding the Part to every model myself.

The problem is that these kinds of tasks can use a lot of AI requests. If you want to use Studio Assistant with MCP clients like Claude Code or Cursor, you need your own API key. Most of the supported providers, like OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini, require you to pay for API usage.

This makes it hard for students, hobby developers, and people who can’t afford paid APIs.

What solution would you like?

I would like Roblox to support more AI providers that have free API access.

Some examples are:

• NVIDIA NIM
• OpenRouter (free models)

This would give developers more choices and make the new Skills feature easier for everyone to use.

Why would this help?

• More developers could use Skills without paying for API credits.
• Students and new developers could use Studio Assistant more often.
• Developers would have more choices instead of only using paid AI providers.
• It would help more people take advantage of the new Skills feature.

I think adding support for more free AI providers would make Studio Assistant even better and allow more creators to use it.

[avienn_a]

Thanks for the thoughtful writeup, and for laying out the use case so clearly. That “100 models, add a Part to each” example is exactly the kind of repetitive work Assistant is meant to take off your plate.

One thing worth knowing, since it may not be obvious: you don’t have to use pay-per-use API credits to connect an MCP client. Providers like Claude and OpenAI let you authenticate with your existing subscription instead of a metered API key, so the usage is covered by your plan rather than billed per request. For the high-volume repetitive work you’re describing, that’s usually much more cost efficient than buying API credits, and it may already solve the cost problem without needing a different provider at all.

On free providers specifically: it’s a fair ask, and we’re looking into solutions like OpenRouter. Nothing we can commit to yet, but broadening the options here is something we’re actively exploring.