Where Do Your LLM API Keys Actually Live?
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Secret management for LLM API keys is critical and actionable advice.
Summary
Two dominant LLM gateway architectures determine where provider API keys reside: in-process, making them accessible to all dependencies via environment variable, or in a network proxy where the app holds only a scoped gateway token. A reproducible demo shows how a compromised dependency can steal keys in the first architecture but not the second, reducing blast radius for providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini.