# Stop letting your hackathon API keys rot

> Source: <https://dev.to/backboardio/stop-letting-your-hackathon-api-keys-rot-542j>
> Published: 2026-06-03 22:12:15+00:00

You've got OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and xAI credits sitting in five dashboards. Plug them all into one API and get free state management, courtesy of [Dev.to](https://dev.to/) and [MLH.](https://www.mlh.com/)

If you've done a hackathon or run a startup, you have API credits scattered everywhere. OpenAI from one event. Anthropic from another. Gemini and xAI from your last sprint. All sitting in separate dashboards, half-used, slowly expiring.

Backboard fixes that. One API, your keys, every model.

Drop in keys from any of these providers and route across all of them behind a single Backboard API:

You keep your credits. You keep your rates. You stop stitching seven SDKs together. One key in front of all of them, with memory, routing, and stateful threads built in.

Memory is the part everyone skips at a hackathon because it's a pain to build. Not here. State management on Backboard is **free**, brought to you by [Dev.to](https://dev.to) and [MLH](https://mlh.io).

Stateful threads at the message level. No vector DB to spin up, no session glue code. Your agent remembers across the whole build.

```
pip install backboard-sdk
# or
npm install backboard-sdk
python
from backboard import Backboard

bb = Backboard(api_key="your_backboard_key")

# Your OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini keys are already wired in.
# Memory and state come free.
thread = bb.threads.create(assistant_id="your_assistant")
bb.messages.create(thread_id=thread.id, content="Remember this for later.")
```

Got tokens from a hackathon? Credits your startup was granted? Put them to work instead of letting them expire.

Add your keys: [app.backboard.io/dashboard/api-keys](https://app.backboard.io/dashboard/api-keys)