Kontext CLI – Credential broker for AI coding agents in Go
We built the Kontext CLI because AI coding agents need access to GitHub, Stripe, databases, and dozens of other services — and right now most teams handle this by copy-pasting long-lived API keys into .env files, or the actual chat interface, whilst hoping for the best. The problem isn't just secret sprawl. It's that there's no lineage of access. You don't know which developer launched which agent, what it accessed, or whether it should have been allowed to. The moment you hand raw credentials to a process, you've lost the ability to enforce policy, audit access, or rotate without pain. The…
In plain words
Kontext CLI is a credential broker that securely manages API key access for AI coding agents written in Go. Instead of storing long-lived credentials in environment files, it provides temporary, auditable access to services like GitHub, Stripe, and databases. Teams declare required credentials in a configuration file, and Kontext handles distribution while maintaining access logs showing which developer launched which agent and what resources it accessed. This enables policy enforcement, access auditing, and credential rotation without exposing raw secrets.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
We built the Kontext CLI because AI coding agents need access to GitHub, Stripe, databases, and dozens of other services — and right now most teams handle this by copy-pasting long-lived API keys into .env files, or the actual chat interface, whilst hoping for the best. The problem isn't just secret sprawl. It's that there's no lineage of access. You don't know which developer launched which agent, what it accessed, or whether it should have been allowed to. The moment you hand raw credentials to a process, you've lost the ability to enforce policy, audit access, or rotate without pain. The credential is the authorization, and that's fundamentally broken when autonomous agents are making hundreds of API calls per session. Kontext takes a different approach. You declare what credentials a project needs in a .env.kontext file: GITHUB_TOKEN={{kontext:github}} STRIPE_KEY={{kontext:stripe}} LINEAR_TOKEN={{kontext:linear}} Then run `kontext start --agent claude`. The CLI authenticates you via OIDC, and for each placeholder: if the service supports OAuth, it exchanges the placeholder for a short-lived access token via RFC 8693 token exchange; for static API keys, the backend injects the credential directly into the agent's runtime environment. Either way, secrets exist only in memory during the session — never written to disk on your machine. Every tool call is streamed for audit as the agent runs. The closest analogy is a Security Token Service (STS): you authenticate once, and the backend mints short-lived, scoped credentials on-the-fly — except unlike a classical STS, we hold the upstream secrets, so nothing long-lived ever reaches the agent. The backend holds your OAuth refresh tokens and API keys; the CLI never sees them. It gets back short-lived access tokens scoped to the session. What the CLI captures for every tool call: what the agent tried to do, what happened, whether it was allowed, and who did it — attributed to a user, session, and org. Install with one command: `brew install kontext-dev/tap/kontext` The CLI is written in Go (~5ms hook overhead per tool call), uses ConnectRPC for backend communication, and stores auth in the system keyring. Works with Claude Code today, Codex support coming soon. We're working on server-side policy enforcement next — the infrastructure for allow/deny decisions on every tool call is already wired, we just need to close the loop so tool calls can also be rejected. We'd love feedback on the approach. Especially curious: how are teams handling credential management for AI agents today? Are you just pasting env vars into the agent chat, or have you found something better? GitHub: https://github.com/kontext-dev/kontext-cli Site: https://kontext.security
More ai this month
the category →
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com
Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
AI · 26d ago · cactuscompute.com
Launched alongside, April 2026
the whole month →
- AG
Thought the resources for GPU arch were lacking, so here we are
Life & fun · Apr 2026 · jaso1024.com
- IB
Built a ~9M param LLM from scratch to understand how they actually work. Vanilla transformer, 60K synthetic conversations, ~130 lines of PyTorch. Trains in 5 min on a free Colab T4. The fish thinks the meaning of life is food. Fork it and swap the personality for your own character.
AI · Apr 2026 · github.com
- BC
Life & fun · Apr 2026 · sam-burns.com
- IB
With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal blogs across many categories. There are two versions: Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal: https://blogosphere.app/ If you don't find your blog (or your favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.
AI · Apr 2026 · text.blogosphere.app