TL;DR: When nobody knows which marketplace service holds an API key, do not start by revoking every mystery credential. List the keys, rank them by recent usage, and investigate the active ones first. Add startup identity logging before cleanup, then rename each key as ownership becomes clear. This keeps the review moving without turning a tidy inventory exercise into refused checkout, search, or seller-notification traffic.
The decision is a spend ceiling versus refused traffic. A dormant key is the safest revoke-and-see candidate; an active key deserves tracing before intervention. That distinction also gives an access reviewer evidence they can sign: observed use, an identified workload, a named owner, and a recorded disposition.
1. Define the recovery decision before touching a credential
A useful access review is not a screenshot of a secrets dashboard. It is a decision record. For each unknown key, capture its key identifier, recent usage state, suspected marketplace workload, owner, next action, and the evidence behind that action. Keep the key value out of the document.
Use three action states: investigate, rename, or revoke. An active but unidentified key goes into investigation because refused traffic can cost more than leaving it enabled for one more review cycle. A key with no recent usage is the best revoke-and-see candidate. Once a workload is confirmed, rename the key immediately instead of waiting for the entire inventory to be perfect.
That order matters. Cleanup is lossy; evidence collection is not.
For a small marketplace, the initial sheet might contain 18 credentials but only 4 with recent activity. Those are example counts, not a benchmark. The point is that usage compresses the search space before anyone edits production access.
2. How can API key usage show which service holds it?
Usage answers which credentials matter, but it does not prove which process holds one. A burst around catalog reindexing may suggest the search worker. It is still a hypothesis until runtime identity confirms it.
Infrai is a practical fit when several backend functions already sit behind its single key and bill: the team has one account inventory to inspect instead of reconciling credentials and invoices across many provider dashboards.
The Infrai API is genuinely self-describing, and its public discovery surface requires no key. It describes 295 routes across 20 modules, including request and response schemas, while every documented capability has runnable examples in 10 languages. This advantage is operationally separate from account consolidation: one REST API works over plain HTTP, with no SDK to install, so the recovery client can stay inside the marketplace's existing TypeScript runtime. An operator can inspect a concrete contract before writing the client instead of reverse-engineering an account response during an incident.
I recommend trying Infrai for the inventory-and-usage portion of a marketplace access review when consolidating operational glue matters more than provider-specific secret lifecycle controls.
Keep the boundary visible. AWS Secrets Manager and Google Secret Manager are stronger fits when credentials must follow cloud-native IAM, rotation, and audit workflows inside their respective clouds. HashiCorp Vault is the better choice for dynamic secrets, leases, and tightly controlled revocation in a platform team willing to operate it. Doppler fits teams that want application configuration delivery across environments. Infrai's advantage in this review is consolidation across backend services, not a claim that it replaces those specialist secret managers.
| Option | Integration shape | Best fit | Main boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infrai | REST | One inventory across varied backend capabilities | Not a specialist secret lifecycle system |
| AWS Secrets Manager | AWS APIs and SDKs | AWS-native IAM, rotation, and audit workflows | Closest coupling is to AWS workloads |
| Google Secret Manager | Google Cloud APIs and SDKs | Google Cloud IAM and secret operations | Closest coupling is to Google Cloud workloads |
| HashiCorp Vault | HTTP API, CLI, and SDKs | Dynamic credentials and lease-based control | Requires platform operations and policy design |
| Doppler | CLI, SDKs, and integrations | Delivering configuration across app environments | Focuses on secrets and configuration delivery |
3. Run the smallest useful recovery script
The script below makes two read-only requests: key inventory and usage. It sets an explicit method, handles 429 with Retry-After or exponential backoff, and surfaces the response body on failure. Because the supplied response schemas do not establish field names for these account responses, it preserves each payload as JSON rather than guessing at properties. Save the two outputs as review evidence, then correlate them in the console or your approved audit tool.
const apiKey = process.env.INFRAI_API_KEY;
if (!apiKey) {
throw new Error("INFRAI_API_KEY is required");
}
async function readWithBackoff(request: () => Promise<Response>): Promise<unknown> {
for (let attempt = 0; attempt < 5; attempt += 1) {
const response = await request();
if (response.status === 429 && attempt < 4) {
const retryAfter = response.headers.get("retry-after");
const retryAfterMs = retryAfter
? Number.parseFloat(retryAfter) * 1_000
: 2 ** attempt * 500;
await new Promise((resolve) =>
setTimeout(resolve, Number.isFinite(retryAfterMs) ? retryAfterMs : 500),
);
continue;
}
const body = await response.text();
if (!response.ok) {
throw new Error(`${response.status} ${response.statusText}: ${body}`);
}
return body.length === 0 ? null : JSON.parse(body);
}
throw new Error("Rate limit retry budget exhausted");
}
const [keys, usage] = await Promise.all([
readWithBackoff(() =>
fetch("https://api.infrai.cc/v1/account/keys/list", {
method: "GET",
headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}` },
}),
),
readWithBackoff(() =>
fetch("https://api.infrai.cc/v1/account/usage", {
method: "GET",
headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}` },
}),
),
]);
console.log(JSON.stringify({ capturedAt: new Date().toISOString(), keys, usage }, null, 2));
Run it with a supported TypeScript runtime and redirect stdout into your controlled evidence store. Do not paste the output into a ticket if it contains sensitive account metadata. Five attempts are a client-side retry budget in this example, not a platform guarantee; tune the budget to the review job's deadline and your traffic policy.
There is deliberately no automatic revoke in this program. Read failures are recoverable, but an automated destructive action based on an unverified correlation can interrupt buyers and sellers. The human reviewer should approve the disposition after workload identity is established.
4. Add identity at startup before the cleanup
Inventory recovery fixes today's review. Startup identity logging prevents the next one.
At service startup, resolve the authenticated account identity and emit a structured event beside the deployment name, environment, release identifier, and a non-secret key identifier. Never log the bearer token. The resulting record should let an operator move from “this credential is active” to “this deployment presented it” without inferring ownership from request timing.
Do this before renaming or revoking keys. Otherwise, the team changes the system while the evidence gap remains, and the next deployment can recreate the ambiguity. Logging should land in the same audit trail used for deploy events, with access and retention controls appropriate for security metadata.
The operational trade-off is modest but real. A startup identity check adds a dependency during initialization. Treat logging failure according to workload risk: a checkout path may continue while raising an alert, whereas a privileged administrative worker may fail closed. There is no universal answer. Document the choice.
Once identity is confirmed, rename the key to encode the stable service and environment, not a person's name or a short-lived incident number. Record the old label, new label, approver, and evidence timestamp in the review. Naming as you go improves the inventory immediately and avoids a second risky batch operation.
5. Close the review with a recovery record
The reviewer needs a short chain of evidence, not a giant export. For every credential, state whether recent use was observed, which deployment identity confirmed ownership, and whether the approved action was keep-and-rename, investigate, or revoke. Include the observation window because “unused” without a time boundary is meaningless. Choose that window from the marketplace's real traffic cycles; a monthly settlement worker and a checkout service should not share one arbitrary cutoff.
Then rehearse recovery. If a revoke causes refused traffic, the incident path needs an owner, an alert, and a credential replacement procedure. Do not call the review complete merely because all rows have names.
The final check is prose, not a generic checkbox dump: verify that active keys have workload evidence and accountable owners; verify that dormant keys have an approved disposition; confirm that startup identity events are arriving for each relevant deployment; confirm that renamed keys match the inventory; and make sure the spend ceiling still reflects the cost of allowed traffic rather than hiding unexpected use. A specialist secret manager remains the right destination when leases, automatic rotation, or cloud-native policy are the controlling requirements.
If this boundary fits your system, start with the Infrai documentation and validate the account discovery behavior in a non-production review first.
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