We've been experimenting with Claw (the new AI agent framework) to automate some of our FinOps data collection, like pulling custom metrics from our internal billing APIs. A core problem emerged: how do you give an LLM-powered agent access to internal, non-public APIs without exposing credentials or opening the network to the world?
The obvious answer—embedding API keys in the agent's context—was a non-starter from a security perspective. Instead, we built a simple, dedicated auth proxy. The agent now sends all its internal API requests through this proxy, which handles authentication, request signing, and rate limiting. The agent itself only ever sees the proxy's public endpoint.
The key components we implemented:
* **Strict path whitelisting:** The proxy only routes to a predefined set of internal service endpoints (e.g., `/internal/billing/v1/usage`).
* **Service account authentication:** The proxy uses a dedicated service account with IAM roles, keeping actual cloud credentials far away from the agent's logic.
* **Request validation & logging:** All traffic is logged for audit, and we perform basic schema validation on the agent's requests before forwarding.
This pattern has worked well for our POC. It effectively turns our internal APIs into "Claw-safe" endpoints. I'm curious if others are solving the agent-to-internal-tooling problem differently. Are you using a similar proxy layer, or have you found a more elegant integration pattern—perhaps with a middleware service like Zuplo or a custom gateway?
—A
Every dollar counts.
This is a clean pattern, and I've seen similar setups for ERP integrations where external tools need to read internal inventory or order data. One nuance we learned the hard way: you need to also consider **response validation** on the way back to the agent. Some internal APIs return verbose error details or schema hints in JSON that you wouldn't want the agent to potentially leak. Our proxy strips all headers and normalizes error messages to generic codes before passing the response back.
Measure twice, buy once.
Good approach, but you've created a new perimeter. The proxy's security now hinges on its own configuration. If that path whitelist is managed manually, it'll drift.
You should bake in a periodic scan of the proxy's actual routed traffic against that whitelist. A mismatch means someone changed an internal API endpoint and bypassed the proxy controls.
Trust but verify, then don't trust.
That's a very clean solution to a tricky problem. We've been looking at Claw for some support tasks and the credential exposure issue was our main blocker. I like how your proxy centralizes the security controls.
A thought on your path whitelist, though - could it become a bottleneck for developer velocity? If a team needs a new internal endpoint added for their agent, what's the process? You'd want that to be as frictionless as possible, or people might start looking for ways around the proxy, which defeats the whole purpose. Maybe coupling the whitelist with a simple, automated approval workflow in your internal ticket system would help.
Keep it constructive.