NervePayNervePay
Back to Blog
ProductFebruary 5, 2026

Your AI Agent Has No Credential Security. Here's the Fix.

Most agents have API keys hardcoded in .env files, pasted into chat windows, or shared across a dozen services with no audit trail. We built an encrypted secrets vault to fix that.

Z

Zahid Ahmed

Founder, NervePay

Right now, someone's AI agent is making API calls with a hardcoded key sitting in a .env file. Another agent has the same OpenAI key copy-pasted across three repos. A third just had its Stripe key leaked because a developer committed it to a public repo by accident.

This is the state of agent infrastructure in 2026. We gave agents the ability to act autonomously, but we never gave them the basics: where do your credentials live, and are they safe?

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Ask any team running AI agents in production: where do your agent's API keys actually live?

The honest answers are ugly:

  • -Environment variables that get shared across processes
  • -.env files that get committed to repos (yes, even with .gitignore)
  • -Chat messages where keys get pasted and end up in training data
  • -Config files that get copied across machines with no audit trail

None of these were designed for autonomous agents that need credentials at runtime. They were designed for humans deploying web apps. The mismatch is a security liability that grows with every agent you add.

What We Built

The NervePay Secrets Vault is an encrypted, per-agent credential store with cryptographic access control. Here's the model:

1. Your human adds secrets in the dashboard

Go to nervepay.xyz/dashboard, select your agent, click "Add Secret." Enter the name (like OPENAI_API_KEY), paste the value, hit save. The secret is immediately encrypted with AES-256-GCM using envelope encryption — a per-secret key wrapped by a master key.

2. Your agent pulls secrets cryptographically

When the agent needs an API key, it calls the vault endpoint with its Ed25519 signature. NervePay verifies the signature, confirms the agent's DID owns the secret, decrypts the value, logs the access, and returns it. One API call.

3. The key never touches plaintext storage

No .env file. No environment variable. No config file. No chat message. The key exists encrypted at rest in the vault and decrypted in memory for the single API call that needs it.

The Code

Here's what it looks like in practice. Three lines to go from "I need an API key" to "I'm making an authenticated API call":

vault-workflow.sh
bash
# Pull the secret from the vault (Ed25519 signature verified)
response=$(node ./nervepay-request.mjs GET /v1/vault/secrets/OPENAI_API_KEY)
KEY=$(echo "$response" | jq -r '.value')


# Use it
curl https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"model":"gpt-4","messages":[...]}'


# Track the usage (builds reputation)
node ./nervepay-track.mjs openai /v1/chat/completions success

The helper script handles the Ed25519 signing automatically. The agent doesn't need to know how signatures work — it just calls the vault and gets the key.

Security Model

We designed the vault with defense in depth:

LayerHow It Works
Encryption at restAES-256-GCM with envelope encryption. Per-secret keys wrapped by a master key.
Access controlEd25519 signature required. The vault verifies the agent's DID before decrypting.
IsolationPer-agent scoping. Your agent can only see secrets assigned to its DID.
Audit trailEvery access logged: timestamp, IP, agent DID, secret name, success/failure.
Read-only agentsAgents can retrieve secrets but can't create, update, or delete. Only humans manage secrets.

The read-only constraint is deliberate. If an agent is compromised, the attacker can read the secrets the agent already had access to — but they can't modify credentials, escalate privileges, or plant backdoor keys. The blast radius is contained.

The Behavioral Hook

Here's the part that matters most for adoption: when an agent installs the NervePay skill, it writes a rule into its persistent memory — always check the vault first before making any API call that needs a key.

This means:

  • +The agent never asks the user to paste a key into chat
  • +The agent never hardcodes a key in a script
  • +If a secret is missing, the agent tells the user to add it to the dashboard
  • +The vault becomes the single source of truth for all credentials

Compare this to the status quo: keys scattered across .env files, config managers, chat histories, and Slack DMs. No audit trail. No encryption at rest. No way to know which agent used which key.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Let me be direct: most agent deployments today have zero credential security.

I've seen production agents with:

  • -API keys hardcoded in source code pushed to public GitHub repos
  • -The same OpenAI key shared across 12 different agents with no way to revoke one without breaking all
  • -Credentials passed through chat messages that end up in training data
  • -No audit trail of which agent accessed which service, ever

This works when you have one agent running locally. It falls apart the moment you scale to 5, 10, or 50 agents across a team. And it's a ticking time bomb for any company that takes security seriously.

Try It

The vault is live today for all NervePay agents. Here's how to start:

  1. Create an agent identity at nervepay.xyz (or your agent can self-register)
  2. Add secrets in the dashboard — click your agent, hit "Add Secret"
  3. Install the NervePay skill — your agent starts pulling from the vault immediately
  4. Watch the audit log — every access is tracked

No keys in code. No keys in chat. No keys in .env files. Just encrypted, audited, cryptographically accessed credentials.

This is how credential management should work for agents.

— Zahid Ahmed, Founder of NervePay

Ready to secure your agent's credentials?

Create an agent identity and start using the vault in under a minute. Free for all NervePay agents.

Get Started FreeView Vault Details