# Actfor > Actfor is a local credential authority for coding agents on macOS. Agents ask Actfor to call provider APIs, create scoped keys and deliver secrets. Actfor does the work, never returns a value, and asks for Touch ID before anything sensitive. Actfor does the credential work your coding agent asks for, such as creating a Resend sending key or changing a DNS record at Cloudflare. Actfor keeps your admin keys on your Mac and makes each call itself, so the agent gets the result and never the key. You approve production changes and new destinations with Touch ID, and you can check every action in the audit log. ## How it works 1. The agent asks. Your agent calls an Actfor tool over MCP or runs the actfor command. The request names a key and a destination, such as resend/acme-sending and the production environment of a Vercel project. 2. Actfor acts. Actfor checks the request against your policy, makes the provider call or writes the value, and returns a fingerprint to the agent. The agent never receives the value. 3. You approve what matters. Actfor opens a Touch ID prompt that names the agent and the action before a production overwrite, a new destination or a reveal. Actfor writes every decision to a hash-chained audit log. ## Use cases - Set up a sending domain. Your agent adds the DNS records at Spaceship or Cloudflare through Actfor. Then Actfor creates a Resend key that can only send from that domain. - Connect a site to a service with a fresh token. Actfor generates a new token and writes it to the site's Vercel project and to the service's Convex deployment. You copy nothing between dashboards. - Rotate a key everywhere it is used. Actfor creates a new version, pushes it to every target on the key's list and keeps the old version working through an overlap window you set. When the window ends, Actfor revokes the old key at the provider. - Let an agent change DNS without the Cloudflare token. The agent sends the DNS request to Actfor. Actfor attaches the token, sends the request only to the Cloudflare paths you allowed and removes any key value from the response. - Review what an agent did yesterday. Open the audit log in the menu bar app or run actfor audit. Each line names the session, the action, the key, the target and a fingerprint, and never the value. ## What Actfor will never do - Actfor asks for no account. Actfor runs on your Mac and never asks you to sign up. Your keys stay in a sealed vault, and the vault key stays in the macOS Keychain. - Actfor runs no server. Actfor has no cloud service in the path. Your agent talks to a process on your Mac, and that process talks only to the providers you configured. - Actfor never returns a value to an agent. No Actfor method returns a secret value. Actfor also replaces any key value that appears in a provider response before the agent sees it. - Actfor never writes to a target you did not allow. Actfor only writes a key to targets on that key's list. Adding a target to the list needs your Touch ID. ## Providers Actfor is in development. A provider is built once its adapter ships in a release. - Spaceship, planned. Actfor makes DNS and domain API calls with your Spaceship key. - Cloudflare, planned. Actfor makes DNS calls and creates API tokens with only the permissions a job needs. - Resend, planned. Actfor makes API calls and creates keys that can only send from one domain. - Vercel, planned. Actfor makes API calls and writes project environment variables as sensitive, so nobody can read them back. - Convex, planned. Actfor writes deployment environment variables. - GitHub, planned. Actfor writes Actions secrets, encrypted for the repository. - PostHog, planned. Actfor makes API calls with your PostHog key. ## Alternatives ### HashiCorp Vault Choose HashiCorp Vault when your team runs servers and needs dynamic database and cloud credentials with leases and policy. An agent with a Vault token can read the secrets its policy allows. Your team operates a Vault server or uses HCP Vault. ### Doppler Choose Doppler when your team wants one dashboard that syncs secrets into Vercel, GitHub and other platforms. doppler run injects secrets into the environment of the command it starts, where the agent can read them. Doppler runs it as a cloud service, and you need an account. ### Infisical Choose Infisical when you want an open source secrets platform with syncs, in the cloud or self-hosted. Its Agent Vault, a research preview, attaches the real key on outbound requests so the agent holds a placeholder. Agent Vault keeps the key out of the agent. Other Infisical clients inject values into the process. Infisical runs it in its cloud, or you run it on your own server. ### 1Password Choose 1Password when you already keep passwords and SSH keys there. Its SSH agent asks for Touch ID on each use and names the app that asks. op run and op read hand secret values to the process that calls them, so an agent that runs them can read the values. You need a 1Password account, the desktop app and the CLI. ### Keeper Choose Keeper when your organisation already uses Keeper. Keeper Secrets Manager offers an MCP server for agents. Agents work through Keeper's MCP tools, and sensitive tools can wait for a person to approve. Keeper hosts the vault, and you need a Keeper account. ### Actfor Choose Actfor when you run several SaaS products with coding agents on a Mac, and you want agents to create, deliver and rotate keys without holding one. Actfor has no team features yet. The agent asks Actfor to act and gets back a fingerprint. Actfor never returns the value. Actfor runs on your Mac and needs no account. ## Questions ### Does the agent ever see a key? The agent never sees a key. No Actfor method returns a value, the MCP server has no reveal or capture tool, and Actfor redacts key values from provider responses. The agent works with names, targets and fingerprints. ### How do I see a value when I need it? Click Reveal in the menu bar app or run actfor reveal. Actfor asks for Touch ID, then copies the value to your clipboard. The value never appears in a terminal or a response. ### Which agents work with it? Any agent that speaks MCP, such as Claude Code or Codex, can use the Actfor MCP server. Any agent with a shell can run the actfor command. ### How does a key get into the vault? You pipe it into actfor capture once, or Actfor creates it. Actfor can generate a random secret, or create a scoped key at Cloudflare or Resend from your admin key. ### Can other software on my Mac get around it? Code running as your user can attack processes and files your user owns, so Actfor cannot stop all of it. The security page lists what Actfor stops, what it does not stop, and how release builds reduce the risk. ### Does it run on Linux or Windows? The first release runs on macOS only, because Actfor relies on Touch ID and the macOS Keychain. ### What does it cost? Actfor is in development, and we have not set a price yet. ## Pages - [Home](https://www.actfor.dev/) - [Security and trust model](https://www.actfor.dev/security) - [Privacy](https://www.actfor.dev/privacy)