Secrets & Environment

Jobs and Servers accept ordinary environment variables and named secret bundles. Use environment values for non-sensitive, deployment-specific configuration. Use Secrets for reusable API keys, tokens, and passwords whose values should not appear in API responses.

	Environment values	Secrets
Visible in API responses	Yes	Never
Reusable by name	No	Yes
Rotation	Resubmit with new values	Update bundle, then resubmit

Pass environment variables

# Explicit value
anycloud submit ghcr.io/acme/train:latest -e MODE=eval

# Read a value from the current shell
anycloud submit ghcr.io/acme/train:latest -e DATASET_TOKEN

# Load a file; explicit -e flags win
anycloud submit ghcr.io/acme/train:latest \
  --env-file .env \
  -e MODE=eval

Python accepts a dictionary:

job = ac.submit(
    "ghcr.io/acme/train:latest",
    env={"MODE": "eval", "RUN_NAME": "baseline"},
)

The CLI warns when a likely-sensitive key is passed through --env, but the submission proceeds.

Create a Secret

Each Secret is a named bundle of one or more KEY=VALUE pairs:

anycloud secrets new hugging-face HF_TOKEN=hf_xxxxxxxxxxxx
anycloud secrets new tracking \
  WANDB_API_KEY=xxxxx \
  WANDB_ENTITY=my-team

The list command returns names and timestamps, never values:

anycloud secrets list

Inject Secrets

CLI

anycloud submit ghcr.io/acme/train:latest \
  --gpu-type h100 \
  --secret hugging-face \
  --secret tracking

Python

import anycloud

ac = anycloud.Client()
ac.create_secret("hugging-face", {"HF_TOKEN": "hf_xxxxxxxxxxxx"})

job = ac.submit(
    "ghcr.io/acme/train:latest",
    gpu="h100",
    secrets=["hugging-face", "tracking"],
)

Secrets also work with @anycloud.function(), @anycloud.serve(), and Servers started from the CLI.

Precedence and rotation

An explicit environment value wins over a same-named key from a Secret. That supports a one-off override without editing the saved bundle.

Overwrite a bundle and resubmit to rotate it:

anycloud secrets new hugging-face HF_TOKEN=hf_rotated
anycloud resubmit <job-id>

Running containers retain the values injected when their VM started. A new submit, resubmit, or spot replacement reads the current bundle.

Deletion is blocked while a non-terminal deployment references the Secret. --force bypasses that safeguard, but the next VM start for a deployment that still references the missing name will fail.

anycloud secrets delete hugging-face --force

Storage and threat model

Secret values are encrypted in the local Anycloud database with libsodium (XSalsa20-Poly1305). The API offers create, list, and delete operations but no operation that returns a value.

At provisioning time, resolved values are written to /run/anycloud-secrets.env on tmpfs with mode 0600, then supplied to Docker through --env-file.

Docker inlines environment values into the container's run configuration. Anyone with root access on the VM can read them through docker inspect or a process environment. Secrets protect values from plaintext local storage and the Anycloud API response surface; they are not a defense against a VM-root attacker.

See secrets reference for exact command syntax.