pi-creel

request_secret for the pi coding agent — capture an API key into a local .env without it ever entering the chat/context.

When the model needs a secret, it calls request_secret instead of asking the user to paste one into the transcript. The tool opens a masked tmux display-popup running the creel binary; the user pastes once, and the value goes straight from the popup into the target .env. The pi process — and therefore the model — receives only a status token (added / updated / cancelled / error), never the value.

Tool

request_secret(name, dest?)

• name — the environment-variable name, e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY.
• dest — path to the .env (relative to cwd), default .env.

Consuming the secret

The value is written to .env mid-session, but the pi process env is frozen at launch, so the model can't just read process.env.NAME. Two supported paths, both of which keep the value out of the chat/context:

• creel exec NAME[,NAME2,...] -- <command> runs <command> with each value in its environment only — never printed, never in argv, never in an error (a missing key is a hard error naming just the key). This is the language-agnostic way to hand a mid-session key to a child process (creel exec OPENAI_API_KEY -- node run.mjs).
• process.env.NAME after a relaunch, once the new process inherits the updated .env.

The model should not read the .env itself. The added / updated reply from request_secret states this consumption path directly.

Requirements

• A tmux session ($TMUX). Without one the tool fails fast and asks the user to paste manually.
• The creel binary on PATH (installed via the tackle family download / kempt). Without it the tool returns an actionable error.

How the value stays out of context

creel does the masked read, the .env upsert (atomic, chmod 600), and the gitignore check inside the popup. It writes only a one-word status token to a temp file that this extension polls. The seam between the two — creel <NAME> --dest <PATH> --status-file <FILE> — carries a name, a destination, and a token, and nothing else. The same seam lets other harnesses (Claude Code / Cursor, via a future creel mcp) reuse the identical capture core.

Design

Pure pieces (schema, popup command, token→reply mapping) live in capture.ts; index.ts is thin, injectable pi/tmux/fs wiring — the same split as pi-wakeup.