Agents never see API keys. Credentials are injected at the kernel level, invisible to the agent process, and automatically rotated.
"A prompt injection caused our agent to dump its environment into a tool call. The OpenAI key was exfiltrated. Our LLM bill spiked overnight. We rotated the key, redeployed every agent that shared it, and spent two days on incident response."
— Head of Platform, Series B AI startup
A crafted prompt causes the agent to leak credentials in output or tool calls. Guardrails can't eliminate it — the credential is still in process memory.
One compromised agent means every agent sharing that key is compromised. Figuring out which agents used it takes days.
A stolen key gets used for crypto prompt farming. The bill arrives as a single line item with no per-agent attribution.
Rotating a key means redeploying every agent that uses it. So rotation gets deferred — and leaked credentials stay valid for months.
Agents make plaintext requests. The kernel module intercepts and injects credentials before the request leaves the host. The agent never sees, stores, or handles any secret.
Point to your credential providers: Kubernetes Secrets, HashiCorp Vault, AWS IAM (via OIDC federation), or any external secret store.
Map which credentials get injected for which agent, to which destinations. Each agent gets its own bindings — no sharing.
When an agent makes an outbound request, the right credential is injected automatically. The agent sends plaintext — the credential never enters its process memory.
The credential is never in the agent's address space. No prompt injection, memory dump, or debug logging can expose it. This isn't defense in depth — it's elimination of the attack surface.
Each agent identity gets its own credential bindings. Agent A uses one API key, Agent B uses another. Revoke one without affecting the others. Attribute costs per agent.
Credentials rotate in the source (Vault, Secrets Manager) and the kernel module picks up new credentials automatically. No agent restart, no config change, no coordination.
No os.getenv(), no secret management SDK. Works with LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, LangGraph, custom frameworks — anything that makes HTTP requests. Learn how →
Start with one agent, one credential. If the kernel module is unavailable, the agent's original credential path still works.
Guardrails try to prevent the agent from being told to leak credentials. But the credential is still in the agent's memory. A novel injection, a memory dump, or a logging misconfiguration bypasses them. Riptides removes the credential from the agent's reach entirely.
A gateway can inject credentials on the way out — but it only covers the LLM call. Agents also reach databases, cloud APIs, and third-party services. A gateway can't sign an AWS SigV4 request or inject a database password. Kernel-level injection covers every outbound connection.
Deploy Riptides and move LLM API keys out of environment variables and into kernel-level injection. The agent code doesn't change — it still makes the same HTTP requests. But the key is no longer in its process, its config, or its logs.
This is the deployment that gets your agent past security review and into production.
| Traditional | Riptides Secretless | |
|---|---|---|
| Where secrets live | Env vars, config files, agent memory | Kernel space only |
| Prompt injection risk | Credential in memory = extractable | Nothing to extract |
| Log exposure | API keys in HTTP logs | Injected after logging layer |
| Blast radius | Shared keys across agents | Unique bindings per agent identity |
| Rotation | Redeploy every agent | Automatic, no restart |
| Code changes | os.getenv(), SDK clients | None |
| Audit posture | "We rotate keys quarterly" | "Credentials never enter agent memory" |
Kernel-level identity and enforcement. No code changes. Deploy in minutes.