vault-k8s-auth

vault-k8s-auth is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mitodl/agent-kit. It costs 50 tokens per session (415 once invoked), scanned A, original, BSD-3-Clause.

A guide for connecting a service running on Kubernetes, a system that manages containers, to HashiCorp Vault, a system for storing secrets, using Kubernetes authentication.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps add or change Vault authentication in Python services using the hvac library, environment variables, Kubernetes role bindings, and deployment settings.
Why use it?
It prevents sensitive Vault settings from being hardcoded and gives services a standard way to authenticate through their Kubernetes identity.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mitodl/agent-kit/vault-k8s-auth
Any agent
npx skills add mitodl/agent-kit --skill vault-k8s-auth
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mitodl/agent-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for vault-k8s-auth

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mitodl/agent-kit/vault-k8s-auth.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mitodl/agent-kit/vault-k8s-auth)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mitodl/agent-kit/vault-k8s-auth"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mitodl/agent-kit/vault-k8s-auth.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 415 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00050 $0.00415
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.00208
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00083
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00042

Measured 4d ago against content hash 8ba69ae0bda9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vault-k8s-auth scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/infrastructure/vault-k8s-auth/SKILL.md · 68 lines

What it actually says

Vault Kubernetes Auth

Services on Kubernetes authenticate to Vault using the Kubernetes auth method via the hvac library. This applies to any Python service the team deploys on the cluster — not just Dagster.

Environment variables

Never hardcode the Vault role or mount path. Always read them from environment variables:

Variable Purpose
VAULT_ADDR URL of the Vault server
VAULT_ROLE Vault role bound to the pod's Kubernetes service account
VAULT_K8S_MOUNT Vault Kubernetes auth mount path

Example wiring:

import os
import hvac

vault_role = os.environ["VAULT_ROLE"]
vault_mount = os.environ["VAULT_K8S_MOUNT"]

client = hvac.Client(url=os.environ["VAULT_ADDR"])
client.auth.kubernetes.login(
    role=vault_role,
    jwt=_read_service_account_token(),
    mount_point=vault_mount,
)

Kubernetes RBAC / auth binding

Use the OLEKSAuthBinding component to bind the pod's Kubernetes service account to the Vault role. This component handles the Vault policy and role configuration.

Helm / pod spec

Inject the variables via Helm values for each service's deployment:

env:
  - name: VAULT_ROLE
    value: "<service-name>-role"
  - name: VAULT_K8S_MOUNT
    value: "<mount-path>"
  - name: VAULT_ADDR
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: vault-config
        key: addr
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 68 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A 8ba69ae0bda9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vault-k8s-auth is a skill published in the GitHub repository mitodl/agent-kit (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed BSD-3-Clause. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 415 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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