Own and Trust Your Agent

You own and can transfer your deployed agent, and you stay in control of credentials through the Secure Vault.

Written By Philippe

Last updated 29 days ago

You own your agent

When you acquire an agent as a Producer, you own your instance of it. Ownership is held by you, it's transferable, and it isn't locked to the platform.

That ownership is recorded as a transferable ownership token tied to your deployed agent. If you want to hand the agent off to someone else, you can transfer it. Your agent is an asset you control, not a seat you rent.

You stay in control of credentials

Most automations need to talk to other services on your behalf — your email, your spreadsheet, your CRM. indie.money handles those connections through the Secure Vault, so your keys are stored securely and used only to run your agent.

You get three ways to provide credentials, and you choose which one fits:

Option	What it means	Good for
Bring your own keys	The agent runs on credentials you provide.	Full control and your own usage limits.
Use the Builder's keys	The agent runs on the Builder's credentials.	Getting started fast with no setup.
Use the platform's keys	The agent runs on platform-provided credentials.	A simple default when you don't have your own — not offered on every agent (see below).

Where the Builder has not connected a key, yours is used — so you keep control of everything they left open, and your key is billed by your provider directly rather than through the agent.

Where the Builder has connected one, theirs is used and the agent shows that credential as locked. That is deliberate: the Builder priced and tested the agent against their own key, and on agents that include AI usage in the price it is the key funding every run.

Platform-provided keys are not offered on every agent. An agent that offers freetrials, or whose Builder includes AI usage in the price, runs on its own connectedkeys — there is no platform fallback behind it, because nobody is funding thatusage. Such an agent will not run until those keys are connected.

Configured credentials stay attached to the agent instance. If you transfer the agent, those credentials transfer with it unless you revoke them at the external provider first.

Why this matters

Ownership and credential control are what make an agent something you can actually depend on for your business. You're not building on rented ground: you own the agent, you decide whose keys it runs on while you hold the NFT, and you can transfer the whole working instance when you sell it. For transfer details, read What Transfers When You Sell Your Agent. To see how this fits the bigger picture, read Why indie.money.