claude-secrets

claude-secrets

Paste an API key into a system popup, store it in macOS Keychain, then reference it by name from any command. The value never enters Claude's context window.

A Claude Code plugin that solves a specific problem: how do you let Claude use your credentials without ever showing them to Claude?

The problem

Every existing answer breaks somehow:

• ~/.zshrc env vars — work, but Claude can echo $STRIPE_KEY to introspect, and the values end up in tool output if commands echo them
• Paste in chat — the value lives in the conversation transcript on disk forever
• secretctl — stores its own master password in ~/.claude.json plaintext
• security CLI — find-generic-password -w prints the value to stdout, which becomes Claude's tool_result
• OAuth MCP servers — work great but only for services that support OAuth

This plugin combines a tested pattern: a native macOS popup (osascript hidden-answer dialog) pipes the typed value directly into a Python process that stores it in Keychain. Claude orchestrates but never observes.

Install

/plugin marketplace add startx-founders/claude-skills
/plugin install claude-secrets@startx-founders

First session after install spends ~10 seconds installing the keyring Python library into the plugin's venv. Once.

Use

In Claude Code, just talk:

"Help me test my Stripe API integration."

Claude (with this skill loaded) will:

1. Run claude-secrets list — sees no STRIPE_KEY yet
2. Suggest: "I'll trigger a popup so you can paste the key — it won't go through chat."
3. Run claude-secrets prompt STRIPE_KEY — system popup appears
4. You type the value, click Store
5. Run claude-secrets run --inject STRIPE_KEY=K -- bash -c 'curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $K" https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges'
6. Show you the response with the key redacted from any echoes

The value lives in macOS Keychain. Claude's context shows only command output with [REDACTED:STRIPE_KEY] wherever the value would have appeared.

Architecture

USER                CLAUDE                BROKER                KEYCHAIN
 │                    │                     │                     │
 │  "test stripe"     │                     │                     │
 ├───────────────────►│                     │                     │
 │                    │ list                │                     │
 │                    ├────────────────────►│                     │
 │                    │ STRIPE_KEY missing  │                     │
 │                    │◄────────────────────┤                     │
 │                    │ prompt STRIPE_KEY   │                     │
 │                    ├────────────────────►│                     │
 │  ┌───────────┐     │                     │                     │
 │  │  popup    │◄────┼─────────────────────┤                     │
 │  │ type sk_..│     │                     │                     │
 │  └─────┬─────┘     │                     │                     │
 │        │           │                     │  set                │
 │        ╰───────────┼─────────────────────┼────────────────────►│
 │                    │ {"status":"ok"}     │                     │
 │                    │◄────────────────────┤                     │
 │                    │ run --inject ... -- curl ...              │
 │                    ├────────────────────►│  get                │
 │                    │                     ├────────────────────►│
 │                    │                     │  value              │
 │                    │                     │◄────────────────────┤
 │                    │                     │  ┌──────────────┐   │
 │                    │                     │  │ subprocess   │   │
 │                    │                     │  │ env=K=value  │   │
 │                    │                     │  │ exec curl... │   │
 │                    │                     │  └──────┬───────┘   │
 │                    │                     │         │ stdout    │
 │                    │                     │◄────────╯           │
 │                    │ sanitized output    │                     │
 │                    │◄────────────────────┤                     │
 │  results           │                     │                     │
 │◄───────────────────┤                     │                     │

The value's journey: popup → osascript stdout → broker Python stdin → keyring → SecKeychain. Going out: SecKeychain → keyring → broker process memory → subprocess env → command. Never crosses into Claude's stdio.

Manual use (without Claude)

You can run the broker directly from a terminal:

# After SessionStart hook installs the venv on first Claude Code session,
# or set up manually:
cd /path/to/claude-secrets
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r pipeline/requirements.txt