Secrets Registry

Non-negotiable rule

Never hardcode credential values. Source, docs, tests, fixtures, prompts, seed data, and generated extension/app content may mention credential names such as OPENAI_API_KEY, but must not contain real API keys, tokens, webhook URLs, signing secrets, OAuth refresh tokens, or private Builder/customer data.

Secret values are supplied at runtime through deployment configuration, the encrypted app_secrets vault, saveCredential / resolveCredential, OAuth, or ${keys.NAME} substitution. Examples must use obvious placeholders such as <OPENAI_API_KEY> or ${keys.SLACK_WEBHOOK}, not real-looking copied values.

When to use

Use this for any external credential your template needs: API keys, service tokens, webhook secrets. It gives you:

• A sidebar UI entry for each credential (masked input, rotate, test, delete).
• Automatic onboarding-checklist items for required: true secrets.
• A stable server-side read API (readAppSecret) that decrypts values on demand.
• Validator hooks for health-checking keys before save and from a Test button.

When NOT to use

• OAuth flows that need to run the full authorization code exchange — use @agent-native/core/oauth-tokens directly to save/refresh tokens. The registry can still surface the OAuth connection in the sidebar by registering a secret with kind: "oauth" — that just delegates status lookup to oauth-tokens and renders a Connect button, no app_secrets row is written.
• Purely process-level env vars that are never user-facing (e.g. NODE_ENV, deployment flags). Those belong in the onboarding form method or the envKeys list in core-routes-plugin.

Registering a secret

// server/plugins/register-secrets.ts
import { defineNitroPlugin } from "@agent-native/core/server";
import { registerRequiredSecret } from "@agent-native/core/secrets";

export default defineNitroPlugin(() => {
  registerRequiredSecret({
    key: "OPENAI_API_KEY",
    label: "OpenAI API Key",
    description: "Used for Whisper transcription of your recordings.",
    docsUrl: "https://platform.openai.com/api-keys",
    scope: "user",
    kind: "api-key",
    required: true,
    validator: async (value) => {
      const res = await fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/models", {
        headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${value}` },
      });
      return res.ok
        ? { ok: true }
        : { ok: false, error: `OpenAI rejected the key (HTTP ${res.status})` };
    },
  });
});

OAuth in the unified UI

registerRequiredSecret({
  key: "GOOGLE_CONNECTED",
  label: "Google account",
  description: "Grants access to Gmail / Calendar APIs.",
  scope: "user",
  kind: "oauth",
  required: true,
  oauthProvider: "google", // must match the provider id in oauth-tokens
  oauthConnectUrl: "/_agent-native/google/auth-url",
});

The sidebar shows a Connect button instead of a text input; no app_secrets row is written — status is derived from hasOAuthTokens("google").

Registered options

Reading a secret from an action

import { z } from "zod";
import { defineAction } from "@agent-native/core/action";
import { readAppSecret } from "@agent-native/core/secrets";
import { getRequestUserEmail } from "@agent-native/core/server";

export default defineAction({
  description: "Transcribe an audio file with Whisper",
  schema: z.object({ fileUrl: z.string() }),
  run: async ({ fileUrl }) => {
    const email = await getRequestUserEmail();
    if (!email) throw new Error("Not signed in");

    const stored = await readAppSecret({
      key: "OPENAI_API_KEY",
      scope: "user",
      scopeId: email,
    });
    const apiKey = stored?.value;
    if (!apiKey) {
      throw new Error(
        "OPENAI_API_KEY is not set. Configure it in the sidebar settings.",
      );
    }

    // …call OpenAI. NEVER log the key or include it in error messages.
  },
});

Rules:

• Never log the value. The read layer enforces this server-side; your code must do the same.
• Use env vars only for deploy-level secrets. If a credential is user-scoped, org-scoped, or workspace-scoped, read the scoped vault/credential store. Do not add a process.env fallback that makes every user inherit one deployment's key.
• Scope matches the registration. scope: "user" → pass the user email. scope: "workspace" → pass the active orgId from getOrgContext(event).orgId.
• One resolver per key, and every runtime path goes through it. Before reading a credential, grep the app for the key name. If a resolver already exists (resolveXConfig, a connector, a client factory), call it — do not read process.env for that key a second time somewhere else.
• Identity comes from the caller, not the module. A shared helper under server/lib/ takes the email as a parameter; only an entrypoint (action, route, cron) decides whose identity it is. A library that resolves its own identity from process.env.AGENT_USER_EMAIL authorizes the deployment rather than the caller.

The failure this prevents is not a leak — it is a split brain. When the config check reads the vault and the feature reads process.env, the settings UI and onboarding checklist report the integration as configured while every actual call fails with "env var is required". The credential is right there in the vault, so the error names the wrong cause and sends everyone hunting for a sync or redeploy problem that does not exist. This has now shipped four times in one app (BigQuery, Jira, Pylon, Academy).

Before finishing any change that touches a credential, run the guard from the app directory — it finds this whether the app lives in templates/ or in a workspace repo:

npx agent-native doctor --only no-env-credentials

resolveCredential sees exactly one organization

resolveCredential(key, { userEmail, orgId }) checks the user scope, then the one orgId you pass, then the solo workspace. That is the whole search. It is correct for a signed-in request, and wrong for two common cases:

• The caller has no organization. A cron, a scheduled job, or any CLI run without a real member identity resolves no orgId, so only the user and solo scopes are ever consulted — and a shared key is in neither.
• The key was synced under a different organization. app_secrets has no scope visible to every org (readAppSecret is strict equality on (scope, scope_id, key)), so a key the vault UI advertises as available to every app is unreadable from any org except the one that ran the sync.

Both produce the same misleading "not set" that the split brain above produces, which is why swapping process.env for resolveCredential can look like a fix and change nothing. A workspace app should read shared keys through a resolver that also sweeps the caller's other memberships and a designated vault org — see resolveConnectorSecret and AGENT_VAULT_ORG_ID in the builder-workspace repo for the shape, including the boot-time assertion that the deployment really is single-tenant before a non-membership-gated fallback is safe.

The doctor guard does not catch this second form — it looks for process.env reads, and resolveCredential is not one. Grep for resolveCredential yourself and confirm each call sits somewhere a single-org lookup is genuinely the right question. Findings that pair it with a ?? process.env.KEY fallback are the sanctioned deploy-level escape hatch; the bugs are calls whose value can only live in another org's vault.

HTTP routes

Core routes plugin mounts these under /_agent-native/secrets/ automatically:

• GET /_agent-native/secrets — list registered secrets with status (set / unset / invalid), metadata, and — for set api-keys — the last 4 characters. Values are never returned.
• POST /_agent-native/secrets/:key — body { value, scope?, scopeId? }. Runs the registered validator; returns 400 with the error on failure.
• DELETE /_agent-native/secrets/:key — remove the stored value.
• POST /_agent-native/secrets/:key/test — re-run the validator against the currently stored value.

Storage & encryption

• Values are stored in app_secrets (created on-demand; no migration needed).
• Encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Key material is derived from <APP_NAME>_SECRETS_ENCRYPTION_KEY when set (for example, ANALYTICS_SECRETS_ENCRYPTION_KEY), then SECRETS_ENCRYPTION_KEY, then BETTER_AUTH_SECRET. App-scoped keys are useful when a local multi-app workspace connects one app to its production database without replacing the shared local authentication secret. If none is set, the framework uses a machine-local fallback and logs a one-time warning — set stable key material in production and in every runtime that reads the same encrypted data.

Ad-hoc Keys

Ad-hoc keys are user-created secrets that are not declared by the template. Users create them through the settings UI or the agent chat to use with automations and the web-request tool. They support ${keys.NAME} substitution in outbound HTTP requests.

Ad-hoc API

Core routes plugin mounts these under /_agent-native/secrets/adhoc:

• GET /_agent-native/secrets/adhoc — list all ad-hoc keys (name, last 4 chars, URL allowlist). Values are never returned.
• POST /_agent-native/secrets/adhoc — body { name, value, urlAllowlist? }. Creates or updates an ad-hoc key.
• DELETE /_agent-native/secrets/adhoc/:name — remove an ad-hoc key.

URL Allowlists

Each ad-hoc key can have a URL allowlist — an array of origin URLs that restrict where the key's value can be sent. The check is origin-level (scheme + host + port). If no allowlist is configured, the key can be used with any URL.

// Creating a key with an allowlist
POST /_agent-native/secrets/adhoc
{
  "name": "SLACK_WEBHOOK",
  "value": "<SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL_FROM_SETTINGS>",
  "urlAllowlist": ["https://hooks.slack.com"]
}

${keys.NAME} Substitution

The web-request tool supports ${keys.NAME} placeholders in the URL, headers, and body. Substitution happens server-side after the agent emits the tool call — the raw secret value never enters the agent's context.

import {
  resolveKeyReferences,
  validateUrlAllowlist,
} from "@agent-native/core/secrets/substitution";

// Resolve all ${keys.NAME} references in a string
const { resolved, usedKeys } = await resolveKeyReferences(
  "Bearer ${keys.API_TOKEN}",
  "user",
  "user@example.com",
);

// Validate a URL against a key's allowlist
const allowed = validateUrlAllowlist(
  "https://hooks.slack.com/services/<WORKSPACE>/<CHANNEL>/<SECRET>",
  ["https://hooks.slack.com"],
);

Key resolution falls back from user scope to workspace scope, so users can override shared keys without breaking automations that reference workspace defaults.

Dispatch Vault Access

Dispatch workspaces have a vault access policy for workspace app credentials:

• all-apps is the default. Every saved Dispatch vault key is available to every workspace app; sync-vault-to-app pushes all vault keys to the target app.
• manual requires explicit per-app grants. Use create-vault-grant / grant-vault-secrets-to-app, then sync-vault-to-app.

Use get-vault-access-settings before deciding whether to create grants, and use set-vault-access-settings only when the user asks to change the policy.

Key Files (ad-hoc)

Related skills

• onboarding — the setup checklist that required secrets show up in.
• actions — where you'll read secrets when calling third-party APIs.
• authentication — session scoping; scope: "user" uses the session email.
• security — input validation and never logging secrets.
• automations — ad-hoc keys power ${keys.NAME} in automation web requests.