security: speech-input example exposes provider API key in client code

[mochafreddo]

Summary

The current speech-input client example demonstrates sending audio directly from a "use client" component to the OpenAI transcription endpoint with:

Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENAI_API_KEY}`

This encourages exposing an OpenAI API key to the browser if consumers copy the example as written.

Affected files

• skills/ai-elements/scripts/speech-input.tsx
• skills/ai-elements/references/speech-input.md

Expected behavior

Examples should be secure by default and avoid putting secret provider API keys in client-side code. A safer example would:

• send the audio to an application-owned server route / proxy, or
• use a short-lived scoped token mechanism explicitly documented as browser-safe

Actual behavior

The example is a client component and performs a direct browser-side request to https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/transcriptions using process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENAI_API_KEY for the Authorization header.

Why this is a problem

NEXT_PUBLIC_* values are exposed to the browser bundle. If a developer follows this example with a real OpenAI API key, the key can be exposed in client code and/or network traffic.

This is especially risky because this file lives in a reusable example skill, so it is likely to be copied into production applications.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open skills/ai-elements/scripts/speech-input.tsx on main.
2. Note that the file starts with "use client".
3. Note the direct fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/transcriptions", ...) call.
4. Note the Authorization header uses process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENAI_API_KEY.
5. In a Next.js app, any real value assigned to that env var will be browser-exposed.

Suggested fix

• Replace the example with a server-mediated pattern, for example posting the recorded audio to /api/transcribe.
• Keep the real provider key on the server only.
• Update the docs example in skills/ai-elements/references/speech-input.md to match.
• Optionally add an explicit note warning against putting provider secrets in NEXT_PUBLIC_* env vars.

Environment

• Repository: vercel/ai-elements
• Branch checked: main
• Observed on: 2026-04-07

References

• skills/ai-elements/scripts/speech-input.tsx
• skills/ai-elements/references/speech-input.md
• .github/SECURITY.md (says to report vulnerabilities by opening a new issue)