credentials.md

Making an account show up

insula never asks for a password and never issues a credential. An account appears when insula can find a credential for it on the host, through one of three lanes:

Lane	Published source	Where the credential comes from
vault	vault	the CortexKit credential vault, via the daemon
local login	oauth	a token or session file a provider's own tool wrote on this machine
API key	api	an environment variable or a provider tool's config file

Which lanes a provider supports is listed per provider in provider-matrix.md. A provider with no credential in any lane is reported as unconfigured in health and is either absent from usage.get or present as a credential_absent entry; neither is a fault.

Vault logins

The vault is the preferred lane: it refreshes OAuth tokens itself, holds one record per account, and is the only lane that can serve several accounts of one provider with their identities.

insula reads the vault records granted to it in two categories:

• llm-provider: OAuth logins and API keys;
• browser-session: web session cookies.

Log in with ck auth

ck auth login            # follow the prompts for the provider
ck quota                 # the account appears once insula has fetched it

insula lists the vault's grants at the start of every refresher turn, so a new record gets a slot within a few seconds and is fetched on that turn or the next. Records are matched to providers by their id prefix (the "family"):

Vault id family	Provider
chatgpt:openai	codex
oauth:anthropic	claude
cookie:claude.ai	claude (subscription dates only, never a usage lane)
oauth:xai	grok
antigravity:google	antigravity
kimi-for-coding, apikey:kimi-for-coding	kimi-for-coding
cookie:kimi.com	kimi-for-coding (subscription extras only)
oauth:cursor, cookie:cursor.com	cursor
cookie:ampcode.com	amp
cookie:qwencloud.com	qwen-cloud
cookie:qoder.com	qoder
cookie:factory.ai	factory
cookie:langdock.com	langdock
cookie:trae.cn	traecn
cookie:xiaomimimo.com	mimo
cookie:ollama.com, apikey:ollama-cloud	ollama
cookie:opencode.ai	opencode and opencodego
apikey:opencode-go	opencodego
apikey:deepseek	deepseek
apikey:synthetic	synthetic
apikey:openrouter	openrouter
apikey:minimax-coding-plan	minimax
apikey:muse	muse
cookie:dev.meta.ai	muse (idle-window enrichment only; llama_dev_sess)
apikey:vercel	vercel (the AI Gateway key)
apikey:vercel-budget	vercel-budget (an access token and team id)
apikey:soniox	soniox (an organization API key)
apikey:abliteration	abliteration (an abliteration.ai API key)
apikey:chatbox	chatbox (a Chatbox AI license key)

The authoritative list is CREDENTIAL_FAMILIES in crates/quota-core/src/vault_handles.rs. A record id may carry an account suffix after the family (oauth:anthropic:<account>).

Web sessions captured by Cerebellum

Some providers publish quota only on a logged-in web page. insula reads their session cookie only from a vault deposit and never from a browser's cookie store. Cerebellum, the CortexKit browser module, opens a throwaway browser, lets the user sign in, and deposits the session as cookie:<domain>:<account> (or cookie:<domain>) in the browser-session category.

The deposit must be the request Cookie: header for the URL insula fetches; the capture URL for each domain is in the cookie-capture table. Rules that follow from how those lanes read identity:

• a domain that supplies usage windows takes one deposit; a second deposit for the same domain is refused when the vault listing is installed. Re-capturing replaces the record (ck auth put --replace) rather than adding a suffix;
• a cookie:claude.ai deposit uses the same account suffix as its oauth:anthropic:<account> login, and is used only after its owner is verified against that login;
• a cookie:kimi.com deposit only adds subscription extras to kimi-for-coding; usage comes from the API key.

When a captured session expires, the entry degrades with credential_rejected and the provider is listed in the cookieLoginsStale health metric. Capture the login again.

Depositing a key by hand

A credential with no ck auth login flow can be stored with ck auth put under the family the provider reads. The Muse CLI may keep its device token in the operating system's credential store (the Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, a secret service on Linux), which insula does not read. So muse is served from a hand deposit under apikey:muse, or from the environment variable or file below.

The Vercel personal budget needs an access token and the team whose budget it reads, so its deposit under apikey:vercel-budget is a JSON object, {"token": "<access token>", "team_id": "<team id or slug>"}. The AI Gateway key for the team's credit balance is a separate deposit under apikey:vercel. They are separate families, never one id with an account suffix: each credential is sent only to its own host.

Local logins and API keys

Without a vault record, most providers fall back to what is already on the machine. How a provider with both lanes combines them (the vault record replacing the local one, or both serving the same account) is provider-specific; provider-matrix.md and the provider's source state it.

Provider	Local file	Environment
abliteration		ABLITERATION_API_KEY
alibaba		ALIBABA_CODING_PLAN_API_KEY, ALIBABA_QWEN_API_KEY, DASHSCOPE_API_KEY
antigravity	the running editor or agy CLI (loopback); the opencode antigravity-auth plugin's sidebar file	ANTIGRAVITY_AUTH_SIDEBAR_STATE_FILE
chatbox		CHATBOX_LICENSE_KEY
claude	OpenCode's anthropic OAuth entry
clinepass		CLINE_API_KEY, CLINEPASS_API_KEY
codebuff	~/.config/manicode/credentials.json	CODEBUFF_API_KEY
codex	~/.codex/auth.json
copilot		COPILOT_API_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, GH_TOKEN
cursor	Cursor's state.vscdb
deepseek	OpenCode's deepseek entry	DEEPSEEK_API_KEY, DEEPSEEK_TOKEN
doubao		Volcengine access key settings; ARK_API_KEY, VOLCENGINE_API_KEY, DOUBAO_API_KEY
elevenlabs		ELEVENLABS_API_KEY, XI_API_KEY
grok	OpenCode's xai OAuth entry
jetbrains	the IDE's AIAssistantQuotaManager2.xml and idea.log
kilo	~/.local/share/kilo/auth.json	KILO_API_KEY
kimi		KIMI_AUTH_TOKEN
kimi-for-coding		KIMI_CODE_API_KEY
llmproxy		LLM_PROXY_API_KEY, LLM_PROXY_BASE_URL
manus		MANUS_SESSION_TOKEN, MANUS_SESSION_ID, MANUS_COOKIE
minimax		MINIMAX_CODING_API_KEY, MINIMAX_API_KEY
muse	MUSE_AUTH_PATH or ~/.config/muse/auth.json	MUSE_DEVICE_TOKEN
neuralwatt		NEURALWATT_API_KEY
opencodego		OPENCODE_API_KEY
openrouter	OpenCode's openrouter entry
sakana		SAKANA_COOKIE
soniox		SONIOX_ORG_API_KEY (an organization key; SONIOX_API_KEY, a project key, is not read)
stepfun		STEPFUN_TOKEN
sub2api		SUB2API_API_KEY, SUB2API_BASE_URL
synthetic		SYNTHETIC_API_KEY
vercel		AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY
vercel-budget		VERCEL_ACCESS_TOKEN with VERCEL_TEAM_ID; the token alone is credential_unusable
warp		WARP_API_KEY, WARP_TOKEN
zai		Z_AI_API_KEY
zenmux		ZENMUX_MANAGEMENT_API_KEY

The cookie providers amp, factory, langdock, mimo, opencode, qoder, qwen-cloud and traecn have no local lane: without a vault deposit they are not configured. Endpoint and region overrides are listed in provider-matrix.md.

Environment variables are read from the module's own environment, which is the daemon's environment plus the module entry's env in subc.jsonc. A variable exported in an interactive shell does not reach a module the daemon started earlier; restart the module after changing it (ck module restart insula).

Checking that an account is served

ck quota                                             # what consumers see
python3 scripts/health.py scopedCredentialIds vaultHandleState vaultEnumerationFailure
cargo run -p quota-module --example vault-lanes      # every vault credential against what is served

• scopedCredentialIds lists the vault records insula installed on its last successful listing. A record missing here was not granted to insula.
• vaultHandleState is answered once a listing has succeeded. awaiting that persists means the vault keeps failing to list; read vaultEnumerationFailure.
• A provider listed under degraded in health has a credential that is failing; its entry's errorClass says why (see the error classes).

Removing an account

Delete the vault record, or remove the local file or environment variable. On the next successful vault listing, insula removes the slots for records that are no longer granted. A consumer that reconciles stored accounts on completeProviders sees the account gone on the provider's next complete answer.