First steps

Once the server is connected, you talk to it in your own words. These are the three things worth trying first, and what should happen.

Sync a project

Open your agent in a project directory and ask:

Sync this folder's secrets from OneGuard

If the directory has never been linked, the agent should show you a list of vaults and wait. It does not pick one. You answer, it picks the secret (or asks, if there is more than one), and writes the file:

Wrote 12 variables to .env
DATABASE_URL, API_TOKEN, STRIPE_KEY, REDIS_URL, …

Names and a count. Not one value.

The link is saved to a .oneguard file that is byte-compatible with the CLI's own, so the same directory keeps working with oneguard env sync in your terminal — and a directory you linked from the terminal is picked up by the agent with no arguments.

Rotate a credential

Generate a new database password for the production secret

The agent calls a tool that has the CLI generate the value and store it directly, then reports:

Replaced DB_PASSWORD in "production" — 12 variables total.
The value was stored and is intentionally not returned.

Nobody saw the password: not you, not the model, not the conversation history. To get it onto your disk, sync the project afterwards.

Ask a question about your organization

Who changed secrets in the last week?

Which vaults do we have, and how many secrets are in each?

These are read-only and answer straight from the audit log and the listings.

Try a refusal

Worth doing once, so you know the guardrails are real. Ask the agent to delete a secret and give it a slightly wrong name:

Delete the secret called "staging-old"

It should come back saying the name does not match what is on the server, and ask you which one you meant, rather than deleting the closest thing it found.

Keeping an agent read-only

If you want an agent that can answer questions but never change anything, give it a read API key. The server refuses every write, whatever the agent tries. Add ONEGUARD_MCP_READONLY=1 and the tools that change things are not even offered.

See how it handles secrets for the full picture.