Implements industry-standard security practices for managing user credentials and API keys in CLI applications.
The handle-secrets skill provides a comprehensive framework for developers building command-line tools that require sensitive user data like API tokens and passwords. It guides users through a security hierarchy of input methods—prioritizing OS keychains and secure pipes over insecure environment variables or command-line arguments—while offering implementation patterns for secret masking, credential resolution fallback chains, and language-specific library recommendations. This skill is essential for both building secure-by-default tools and auditing existing codebases for common secret-handling vulnerabilities and CVE anti-patterns.
Key Features
01Automatic secret masking patterns for debug logs, error messages, and HTTP traces
02Security hierarchy ranking from OS keychains to stdin and config files
031 GitHub stars
04Security audit checklists to identify and mitigate common CLI secret-handling anti-patterns
05Standardized credential resolution fallback chains for interactive and automated environments
06Language-specific library recommendations for Rust, Go, Python, Node.js, and Ruby
Use Cases
01Developing a new CLI tool that requires secure API key storage and retrieval
02Performing a security review of existing CLI code to identify hardcoded secrets or insecure argument passing
03Configuring CI/CD pipelines to handle credentials safely using environment variable fallbacks
