Secrets

API keys, bot tokens, and any other sensitive value the agent needs at runtime — stored in /data/config/secrets.json and injected into the container.

URL: /settings?tab=secrets

Write-only from the UI's perspective. Axiom never returns existing secret values — the list shows a masked preview (e.g. sk-••••••1234). To change a secret, type the new value; the old one is overwritten.

What lives here

Typical entries that do belong here:

Key	Used by
GH_TOKEN	gh CLI tool (also raises the GitHub API rate limit when the skill installer fetches skills)
<ANY_CUSTOM_VAR>	Any user-installed skill that reads process.env.<…>

Adding a secret

Two fields at the bottom of the panel:

• Key — uppercase letters, digits, and underscores only, must start with a letter. Regex: ^[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]*$. Examples: OPENAI_API_KEY, MY_CUSTOM_TOKEN_2.
• Value — the secret itself. Masked by the password input.

Click Save to persist. Invalid keys (or duplicates of an existing one) are rejected inline with a message.

Editing an existing secret

Click the ✎ icon next to a secret to reveal an inline input, type the new value, click Save. The previous value is overwritten, not appended.

Deleting a secret

Click the 🗑 icon. A confirmation dialog shows the key name; confirming removes the entry from secrets.json. Anything referencing that key will fall back to its default behavior (e.g. the OpenAI provider will refuse to start if its key is gone).

Where they end up

• Written to /data/config/secrets.json (mode 0600, chowned to the container user).
• Never logged, never returned via API, never included in the system prompt.
• Available to provider modules and tools via the runtime secrets accessor.

Also readable from $SECRET_NAME-style environment variables at container start — see Environment Variables for the precedence rules between env vars and secrets.json.

Personal secrets (multi-user)

On an instance with several accounts, the bootstrap admin (the first account) manages the global secrets described above. Every other user — regular users and additional admins — sees a Secrets tab with their own secrets:

• Stored encrypted in /data/users/<username>/secrets.json (mode 0600); values are never returned by the API.
• Merged over the global secrets only into the environment of that user's shell commands (chat and background tasks). A personal secret overrides a global one with the same name, for that user only.
• Never added to the Axiom process environment, so other users' commands never see them.
• Nobody — including the admin — can see another user's secrets. Non-bootstrap admins additionally see the global secrets (masked, read-only).

Backup & rotation

/data/config/secrets.json is part of the normal /data volume. Back up the volume and you have your secrets. Rotate a key by saving the new value in the UI; the change takes effect immediately on the next request that uses it.