Secrets

Truss manages API keys, access tokens, passwords, and other secrets so you don’t have to expose them in code.

Create a secret

Baseten UI
cURL

To create a secret:

Sign in to your workspace at app.baseten.co and go to Secrets in your workspace settings.
Enter a name for the secret, for example hf_access_token.
Enter the secret value.
Choose Add secret.

To create a secret:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.baseten.co/v1/secrets \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BASETEN_API_KEY" \
  --data '{
    "name": "hf_access_token",
    "value": "hf_..."
  }'

{
  "id": "3kZ9xqd",
  "created_at": "2026-07-10T00:00:00Z",
  "name": "hf_access_token",
  "team_name": "My team"
}

For more information, see Upsert a secret.

Secrets named DOCKER_REGISTRY_<registry-host> authenticate image pulls from private registries. Their value must be the Base64 encoding of username:password; Baseten validates this when you save the secret.

Use secrets in your model

Once you’ve created a secret, declare it in your config.yaml and access it in your model code.

Never store actual secret values in config.yaml. Use null as a placeholder. The secret in your config.yaml is a reference to the key in the secret manager.

Specify the reference to the secret in config.yaml:

config.yaml

secrets:
  hf_access_token: null

Secrets are passed as keyword arguments to the Model class. To access them, store the secrets in __init__:

model/model.py

def __init__(self, **kwargs):
    self._secrets = kwargs["secrets"]

Then use the secret in your model’s load or predict method by accessing it with the key:

model/model.py

def load(self):
    self._model = pipeline(
        "fill-mask",
        model="baseten/docs-example-gated-model",
        use_auth_token=self._secrets["hf_access_token"]
    )

This pattern works when your model.py downloads the weights itself. To authenticate weights loaded through the Baseten Delivery Network (the weights: config), reference the secret from the per-source auth block instead. A secrets: entry alone does not authenticate weight mirroring.

Use secrets in custom Docker images

When using custom Docker images, Truss injects secrets into your container at /secrets/{secret_name} instead of passing them through kwargs. You must specify the reference to the secret and then access it in your start_command or application code. Specify the reference to the secret in config.yaml:

config.yaml

secrets:
  hf_access_token: null

Read secrets in your `start_command`

To read a secret in your start_command:

config.yaml

docker_server:
  start_command: sh -c "HF_TOKEN=$(cat /secrets/hf_access_token) my-server --port 8000"

Read secrets in application code

To read a secret in application code:

model/model.py

with open("/secrets/hf_access_token", "r") as f:
    hf_token = f.read().strip()

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Create a secret

Use secrets in your model

Use secrets in custom Docker images

Read secrets in your `start_command`

Read secrets in application code

​Create a secret

​Use secrets in your model

​Use secrets in custom Docker images

​Read secrets in your start_command

​Read secrets in application code

Create a secret

Use secrets in your model

Use secrets in custom Docker images

Read secrets in your `start_command`

Read secrets in application code