Show HN: AgentSecrets – Zero-Knowledge Credential Proxy for AI Agents

[steppacodes]

After seeing 8,000+ MCP servers exposed this month and the OpenClaw/ClawHavoc campaign compromise 30,000+ instances, I built a proxy that keeps credentials in the OS keychain. The agent makes authenticated API calls but never sees the key values.

The core insight: AI agents are users, not applications. Applications need credential values to authenticate. Agents just need to make authenticated calls. Those are different things.

AgentSecrets sits between the agent and the upstream API. The agent says "use STRIPE_KEY". The proxy resolves the real value from the OS keychain, injects it into the request at the transport layer, and returns only the response. The key never enters agent memory.

Technical details: -Local HTTP proxy on localhost:8765 with session token (blocks rogue processes on same machine) -OS keychain backed — macOS Keychain, Linux Secret Service, Windows Credential Manager -6 injection styles: bearer, basic, custom header, query param, JSON body, form field -SSRF protection blocking private IPs and non-HTTPS targets -Redirect stripping — auth headers not forwarded on redirects -JSONL audit log — key names only, no value field in the struct, structurally impossible to log values -MCP server for Claude Desktop and Cursor -Native OpenClaw skill -Global storage mode config — set keychain-only once during init, applies everywhere

Honest limitations: if a malicious skill has independent network access outside AgentSecrets it can still make its own calls. This removes credentials as an attack surface specifically, not every attack surface.

For the specific attack that just hit 30,000 OpenClaw users — a malicious skill exfiltrating plaintext credentials — it is structurally prevented. The keys were never on the filesystem. MIT, open source.

[gauravguitara]

Interesting we both posted absolutely at the same time for the exact same problem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47167671 I've built a token exchange using RFC 8693.

[verdverm]

This defines Show HN right now, so many people using AI to throw together their next best shot at making it big. The code was never the bottle neck, it's something every one of these submissions is not seeing

[steppacodes]

Interesting!