If you use the Codex CLI (or any other bearer-token-based MCP client) to talk to Hoard, you’re holding a long-lived API key in your shell environment. Sometimes you need to rotate it: an employee left, a laptop got lost, you suspect a leak, or you’re just doing a quarterly hygiene pass. This page is the clean rotation flow. It takes about 3 minutes.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tryhoard.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
When you should rotate
- A laptop or developer machine that had the key on it left your possession
- An employee or contractor who had access to the key left
- The key showed up in a chat log, a screenshot, or any place it shouldn’t have
- It’s been more than 6 months and you’ve never rotated
- You ran a security audit and a tool flagged the key
What rotation does and doesn’t break
Breaks. Any client using the old bearer key stops working immediately. That’s the Codex CLI on your machine and any other CLI tools you’ve configured with the same key. Doesn’t break. OAuth-based connectors. Claude.ai and ChatGPT use OAuth, not your bearer key. They keep working through a rotation without any action on your part. The bearer key is only used by clients that can’t do OAuth, primarily thecodex mcp CLI.
The rotation flow
Step 1: Revoke the old key
Open Settings → Assistants → API keys. Find the key in the list and click Revoke. Confirm. The old key is now dead. Any in-flight request using it will return an auth error on its next call. If you want to verify it’s dead, try ahoard.sync.health call from a terminal that has the old key, it should fail.
Step 2: Generate a new key
Same page, click Generate new key. Copy the 64-character hex string immediately, Hoard shows it once and never again. If you lose it before pasting it somewhere safe, repeat this step. Save it to a password manager. Don’t email it to yourself, don’t paste it into a notes app that syncs to the cloud unencrypted.Step 3: Re-run the installer
The cleanest way to wire the new key into Codex is to re-run the one-line installer. On macOS or Linux:HOARD_API_KEY, and re-registers the Hoard MCP server with Codex. It overwrites the old registration, so you don’t end up with two entries.
If you prefer to do it by hand:
-
Edit your shell rc file (
~/.zshrc,~/.bashrc, or PowerShell$PROFILE). -
Replace the old
export HOARD_API_KEY="..."line with the new key. - Open a new terminal so the new value takes effect.
-
Run
codex mcp listto confirm Hoard is still registered. If it’s not, re-add it:
Step 4: Verify
Open Codex and ask it to call a low-risk read:“use hoard: run hoard.sync.health and tell me what comes back”A healthy response means the new key is wired up and Codex is talking to Hoard.
Step 5 (only if you suspect a breach): rotate OAuth too
Bearer key rotation doesn’t touch OAuth. If you’re rotating because of a known leak or compromise, not just routine hygiene, also revoke OAuth:- Settings → Assistants → Connected apps.
- Click Revoke next to Claude and ChatGPT.
- Reconnect each one from their respective setup pages: Claude, ChatGPT.
After rotation
A few things to check the next day:- Your activity log shouldn’t show any
rejected_by_tokenoutcomes from anywhere unexpected. If it does, somebody else’s tooling is still trying the old key. - Codex sessions you start fresh should work. Sessions that were already open before the rotation may need a restart to pick up the new env var.
- If you put the old key into a CI environment or a teammate’s machine, update those too. The installer + a fresh
HOARD_API_KEYin their shell profile is the same flow.
What to do if you forget which key is current
This happens. You generated two keys at different times and you can’t remember which is in your shell. The fix: revoke both and generate a third. Re-run the installer. Now you know. Hoard never exposes the value of an existing key after creation. There is no “show me my current key” button by design, if the dashboard showed it, a screen capture or shoulder surf would leak it.Related reading
- Connect Hoard to OpenAI Codex, full Codex setup
- Agent permissions and safety, what the bearer key gates against
- Reading your agent activity log, verify the rotation worked
- When the agent says ‘I can’t do that’, diagnose post-rotation auth errors