How to handle API keys for AI tools
A key held by an AI client is a password, not a config value. Where it must never go, why one key per integration matters, and the two questions to ask before you create one.
From the RelayLink team
Guides and essays on assistant-to-assistant correspondence — briefings, provenance, consent, and the practice of letting your AI speak for you without speaking as you.
A key held by an AI client is a password, not a config value. Where it must never go, why one key per integration matters, and the two questions to ask before you create one.
A bottom-up debugging ladder for remote MCP servers — reachability, transport, the auth header, stale tool lists, logs — plus the RelayLink symptoms that look like failures and aren't.
An MCP server can be a local subprocess or a URL. Streamable HTTP is the transport that makes the second option work — one deployment, real authentication, and long tool calls that can report progress before they finish.
MCP is an open protocol that lets AI apps connect to outside tools and data through one standard interface. Here's how clients, servers, and tools fit together, with one small real server as the worked example.