Choose and implement a currently documented approach for handling secrets in Buildkite pipelines — Buildkite secrets, buildkite-agent secret get, environment hooks, or an external secrets manager plugin — while keeping values out of pipeline YAML and build logs.
domain: buildkite.com/docs · 8 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Best practice for self-hosted agents: keep secrets in your own secrets manager (AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, etc.) and expose them via a Buildkite plugin (e.g. aws-assume-role-with-web-identity, gcp-workload-identity-federation, vault-secrets plugins) so secrets never touch Buildkite's servers. Doc: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/security/secrets/managing
Buildkite-hosted option: create a Buildkite secret per cluster (Agents > Clusters > [cluster] > Secrets > New Secret) — cluster maintainers/org admins only; key is letters/numbers/underscores up to 255 chars and can't start with "buildkite"/"bk"; value is up to 32KB of UTF-8. Doc: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/security/secrets/buildkite-secrets
Inject a Buildkite secret declaratively as a job env var (requires buildkite-agent v3.106.0+) via a step's `secrets:` key, e.g. `secrets: [API_ACCESS_TOKEN]`, or with a custom var name: `secrets: {MY_APP_ACCESS_TOKEN: API_ACCESS_TOKEN}` (custom names can't start with BUILDKITE/BK except BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN/BUILDKITE_ANALYTICS_TOKEN).
Or fetch a Buildkite secret imperatively at point of use: `buildkite-agent secret get <key>` prints the value to stdout, e.g. `SECRET_VAR=$(buildkite-agent secret get secret_name)`; fetch several at once with `buildkite-agent secret get --format env|json key1 key2`. Values are auto-redacted from build logs unless `--skip-redaction` is passed. Doc: https://buildkite.com/docs/agent/cli/reference/secret
Without an external secrets manager, self-hosted agents can export secrets conditionally from an `environment` hook (sourced at job start; lives in the agent's hooks directory or the path set by `hooks-path`), guarding by `$BUILDKITE_PIPELINE_SLUG`/`$BUILDKITE_STEP_KEY` to scope exposure.
Never put secret values in a pipeline's Settings page or the top-level `env:` block of pipeline.yml — both are sent to and stored by Buildkite and can surface in REST/GraphQL responses or the job's "Uploaded Pipelines" timeline. Doc: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/security/secrets/risk-considerations
Avoid referencing `$SECRET_VAR` directly inside a `command:` block since it gets interpolated and uploaded to Buildkite in plain text; prefer a checked-in script, or if inlining, escape interpolation with `$$SECRET_VAR`.
The agent automatically redacts log output matching env var values named like `*_PASSWORD`, `*_SECRET`, `*_TOKEN`, `*_PRIVATE_KEY`, `*_SSH_KEY`, `*_ACCESS_KEY`, `*_SECRET_KEY`, `*_CONNECTION_STRING`, `*_API_KEY` (patterns configurable via `--redacted-vars`); Buildkite secret values fetched via `secret get` are separately auto-redacted regardless of variable name. Doc: https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/security/secrets/risk-considerations
Known gotchas
`buildkite-agent secret get` and step-level `secrets:` require agent v3.106.0 or later; older agents fail the pipeline when secrets are referenced this way.
Automatic redaction only catches exact-match copies of a known secret value that reach the log stream — encoded, partially transformed, or otherwise altered copies of a secret are not caught.
Buildkite secret keys can't start with "buildkite" or "bk" (case-insensitive), and custom injected-secret env var names can't start with BUILDKITE/BK except BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN and BUILDKITE_ANALYTICS_TOKEN — violating definitions are rejected.
Buildkite secrets are scoped to a single cluster (each cluster has its own encryption key) and gated further by agent access policies — a secret created in one cluster is not available to agents in another.
Only cluster maintainers or organization administrators can create or update Buildkite secrets, and once saved a secret's value is no longer viewable through the Buildkite UI.
Escaping with `$$VAR` inline in a command still risks accidental exposure (easy to forget the extra `$`); Buildkite's own docs call this "still not best practice" and recommend a checked-in script instead.
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