Secret Management: Secure Credential Storage
Store and manage your OpenClaw agent's credentials, API keys, and sensitive configuration securely using the built-in secret vault.
What You Will Get
By the end of this guide, all your OpenClaw agent's sensitive credentials will be stored in a secure vault with access controls, encryption, and audit trails. No secrets will appear in plain text in prompts, configurations, or logs.
Secret management is about more than just encrypting values. It encompasses access control (who can read a secret), auditing (who did read a secret), rotation (replacing secrets regularly), and injection (how secrets reach the agent at runtime). A comprehensive approach addresses all of these.
You will configure the secret vault, migrate existing secrets, set up access policies, enable automatic rotation, and verify that secrets never leak into logs or error messages. The result is a secure credential management system that your team can trust.
Step-by-Step Setup
Follow these steps to set up secure secret management.
Open the Secret Vault
Navigate to the Security tab in your RunTheAgent dashboard and select Secret Vault. The vault is a dedicated, encrypted store for all sensitive values. It is separate from environment variables and has its own access controls and audit logging.
Migrate Existing Secrets
Review your agent's configuration, environment variables, and tool settings for any secrets stored in plain text. Move each one to the vault by creating a new secret entry and replacing the plain text value with a vault reference. Common secrets to migrate include API keys, database passwords, and webhook signing keys.
Configure Access Policies
Set access policies that define who and what can read each secret. Limit human access to security administrators. The agent itself should have read-only access to only the secrets it needs. Use the principle of least privilege to minimize the blast radius of a potential compromise.
Enable Automatic Rotation
For secrets that support rotation (like API keys and passwords), enable automatic rotation on a schedule. The vault generates a new value, updates all references, and revokes the old value. Configure the rotation interval based on the sensitivity of each secret.
Configure Secret Injection
Set up how secrets are injected into the agent at runtime. Secrets can be injected as environment variables, tool parameters, or prompt variables. The injection happens just before the agent processes a request, ensuring secrets are never persisted in the context window or conversation history.
Enable Leak Prevention
Turn on the secret leak prevention feature that scans agent outputs, logs, and error messages for secret values. If a secret is detected in any output, it is automatically redacted and an alert is raised. This prevents accidental exposure through verbose error messages or debugging output.
Test and Verify
Create a test secret, reference it in a tool configuration, and trigger the tool. Verify in the logs that the secret value is redacted and only the vault reference appears. Also verify that the tool executes correctly, confirming that secret injection works as expected.
Tips and Best Practices
Use Descriptive Secret Names
Name secrets clearly so their purpose is obvious. 'STRIPE_LIVE_API_KEY' is much better than 'KEY_1'. Good naming reduces the chance of using the wrong secret or accidentally deleting one that is still in use.
Never Log Secret Values
Even in debug mode, secrets should never appear in logs. The leak prevention feature catches most cases, but design your custom tools to never log the secret values they receive.
Separate Secrets by Environment
Maintain separate secrets for staging and production environments. Never use production secrets in staging. This prevents accidental operations against production services during testing.
Revoke Immediately on Suspicion
If you suspect a secret has been exposed, revoke it immediately and generate a new one. Do not wait for the next scheduled rotation. The cost of a false alarm is far less than the cost of a breach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Pages
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