Secrets management tools for AI agents, not just servers.

A secrets manager stores credentials centrally, controls who can read them and hands them to the applications that need them. HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Infisical and Doppler do this well for servers, containers and CI pipelines. AI work adds places those tools were never designed to reach. People paste API keys into ChatGPT and Claude to get an agent working. Keys end up in prompts, chat history, Slack threads and agent config files. Once a key is in a prompt, it is in the model’s context, where it can be logged and repeated back. For AI agents, the job is narrower. An agent should be able to use a key without the key appearing in the conversation, and people should be able to use a shared key without being able to read it.

The usual criteria, and where each one is best handled: Encryption at rest: essential for any tool. Joyst encrypts vault entries at rest. Access control: who can read, use and change each secret. Joyst separates use from manage rights, so people can use a key without seeing its value. Audit logs: a record of changes. Joyst’s audit trail records who connected, published or changed what. Logging of each individual use is not something Joyst describes today. Automatic rotation: a core feature of infrastructure tools. In Joyst you replace a value by hand. There is no scheduled rotation. Dynamic or short-lived secrets: an infrastructure feature for databases and cloud roles. Not offered by Joyst. Leak scanning: dedicated scanners watch repositories and chats for exposed keys. Joyst does not scan for leaked keys. Integrations: infrastructure tools plug into Kubernetes, CI and cloud platforms. Joyst does not sync with Vault or AWS. The extra criteria for AI agents: Kept out of model context: can an agent use the key without the value entering the prompt? Referenced by name: can agent setups carry the secret’s name instead of its value? Use without reveal: can a teammate use a shared key without being able to read it?

Secrets management solutions fall into a few groups. Cross-platform vaults, such as HashiCorp Vault, its open-source fork OpenBao and Akeyless, hold secrets for many platforms in one place and can issue short-lived credentials. Cloud-native services, such as AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault and Google Secret Manager, are the simplest choice when your workloads live in one cloud. Developer-focused secret management tools, such as Infisical and Doppler, sync environment variables into apps and CI pipelines. On Kubernetes, the External Secrets Operator pulls secrets from any of these into your clusters. All of these were built for applications and infrastructure. Joyst covers the keys people and agents use inside AI tools, and runs alongside whichever of them you already use.

Infrastructure secrets managers (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Infisical, Doppler) Built for: servers, containers, CI pipelines and cloud workloads. Typical secrets: database passwords, cloud roles, service certificates. Delivered to: applications, at deploy time or at start-up. Strengths: rotation, dynamic secrets, deep platform integrations. A vault for AI workflows (Joyst) Built for: people and AI agents working in ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and similar tools. Typical secrets: SaaS API keys and tokens that agents and MCP tools use. Delivered to: authorised calls, with the value applied on Joyst’s server. Strengths: keys referenced by name, kept out of model context, tied to agent packages and team permissions. Joyst is not built for infrastructure secrets. Keep those in your infrastructure secrets manager.

Controlled substitution means the agent refers to a secret by name and Joyst inserts the real value on its own server at the moment of use. For an authorised HTTP call, the agent sends the request with a placeholder where the key belongs. Joyst checks the caller may use that secret, applies the value and returns the response, never the key. It is designed so the raw value does not appear in the prompt the model sees. Where substitution is available can change between releases.