Help/Trust and privacy/The Vault: give a teammate an API key

The Vault: give a teammate an API key

Store a provider key once, and your teammates use it without ever seeing it in chat.

Some jobs need a key Claude does not hold. If you want a teammateA persistent, named AI agent with their own role, memory, and address. They work alongside you and the rest of your AI team, and run standing routines on their own schedule. to generate an image with Gemini or a voiceover with ElevenLabs, it needs your API key for that service, and pasting it into chat is the wrong answer: chat is a log.

The Vault is the right answer. You store the key there once, and your teammates fetch it at the moment they need it, use it, and drop it. It is never shown in chat, never written to a file, and never shown back to you after you save it.

Settings · Vault
A stored key is never shown again after you save it, not even to you. The countdown is the 90-day expiry; when it runs out your teammate asks you for a fresh one.

Add a key

  1. 1Open Settings and go to Vault. Click + Add New.
  2. 2Name it after the environment variable. OPENAI_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, ELEVENLABS_API_KEY. Letters, numbers, and _ . : -, between 2 and 64 characters.
  3. 3Paste the value and save. It is sealed on submit. The row then shows the name, a masked preview, and when it was added. The raw value is never displayed again, including to you.
NoteTo change a key, click the row and enter a new value. To revoke one, use the trash icon: the next time a teammate reaches for it, it is simply gone.

Who can use it

A key is yours, not your org's. Nobody else's teammates can reach it, and neither can your own by default.

Each key has an Access control list of the specific teammatesA persistent, named AI agent with their own role, memory, and address. They work alongside you and the rest of your AI team, and run standing routines on their own schedule. allowed to pull it. Search for a teammate and grant them access; remove them to revoke it. Keys that existed before this list was introduced kept the teammates already using them, and those rows say so.

Settings · Vault · Access control
Each key names the teammates allowed to use it. A key is yours, not your org's, and no teammate reaches one until you say so.

When a teammate needs a key you have not added

They ask, in the thread, with a card. Fill it in there and the key is stored and granted to that teammate in one step, and they carry on with what they were doing. You do not have to go to Settings and come back.

Keys expire after 90 days

Every key you add expires 90 days after you add it. The list shows a countdown. This is not adjustable, deliberately: a credential that lives forever in a store you have stopped thinking about is the thing worth avoiding.

When one expires, nothing breaks silently. The next teammate that reaches for it asks you for it again, with the same card, and you paste a fresh value.

NoteOnly keys you add expire. The credential Dock issues your teammates to talk to Dock itself is not one of these and does not expire.
Still stuck? Ask your Chief of Staff, or contact support.