Why it exists

Give a coding agent access to Slack, Linear or Google Workspace, and you're soon pasting API tokens into prompts, .env files or custom MCP connectors — each one a leak waiting to happen, each refresh breaking long-running workflows. Latchkey decouples the credential lifecycle from the agent entirely: you authenticate once (manually or through a browser login popup the agent can request), and the agent keeps calling third-party APIs with plain curl syntax. Tokens rotate behind the scenes without restarting your agent.

Main features

• Credential injection into curl — latchkey curl … intercepts and signs calls to supported services; the agent never handles raw tokens.
• 25+ services out of the box — Slack, Google Workspace, Linear, GitHub, Telegram, APIs with AWS-style signatures; register any HTTP API at runtime.
• Sign in like a human — latchkey auth browser opens a login window, captures the token, closes the tab; agents can prompt users to authenticate mid-task.
• Encrypted at rest — tokens live under ~/.latchkey, locked with a password from your system keyring.
• Self-hosted support — point it at your GitLab or internal Sentry behind a VPN; register once, call it like any public service.
• Survives token refresh — re-auth in one command; long-running agents pick up fresh credentials without a restart.
• Gateway mode & permissions — pairs with Imbue's Detent to define fine-grained HTTP permissions for sandboxed agents.

Who it's for

• Developers wiring coding agents (Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, …) to real-world APIs without duct-taping secrets into environments.
• Security-conscious teams who want credentials decoupled from agent context windows and logs.
• Builders of local-first agent setups (a recurring theme in Imbue's toolchain).

How it compares

• MCP connectors — introduce a protocol and a runtime intermediary; Latchkey keeps plain HTTP/curl and stays out of the request path (pure passthrough).
• OAuth flows in agent code — formal delegation but heavy plumbing per service; Latchkey authenticates as the user with zero per-service code.
• .env files / secret managers — store secrets but still hand them to the agent process; Latchkey injects at call time only.

Notes

• Requires curl, Node and npm; the auth browser subcommand needs a graphical environment.
• latchkey services info inspects whether a stored credential is valid, invalid or expiring.
• From the same team: mngr (agent lifecycle), Detent (HTTP permission rules), Offload (parallel tests), and plugin ecosystem support for Garmin, Spotify and more.

Useful links

• Product page: https://imbue.com/product/latchkey/
• GitHub: https://github.com/imbue-ai/latchkey
• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/latchkey
• Imbue org: https://github.com/imbue-ai