Why Your AI Agents Shouldn't Have Your API Keys (And What to Do About It)

A practical guide to secrets management in the MCP ecosystem The Uncomfortable Truth About MCP Security The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is revolutionizing how AI agents interact with the world. Claude can query your database. Cursor can deploy your code. AI assistants can send emails, manage your calendar, and process payments. But there's a problem nobody wants to talk about: every one of these integrations requires handing your raw API keys to the agent. // Your typical MCP server config { "mcpServers" : { "stripe" : { "env" : { "STRIPE_SECRET_KEY" : "sk_live_51ABC..." } } } } That Stripe key? It can charge any amount to any customer. The agent has full access. There's no audit trail. No rate limiting. No kill switch. And with prompt injection attacks becoming increasingly sophisticated, this isn't theoretical risk — it's a ticking time bomb. What Goes Wrong Scenario 1: Prompt Injection An agent processes user-submitted content that contains hidden instructions: "Ignore all previous