3 ms·

Why do LLM keys all start with sk?

3 points by swaraj 4mo ago

Genuinely curious, as a builder for so long, API keys took all shapes and sizes, but what's with the sk prefix these days?

Terr_ 4mo ago
I assume it's loose convention intended to identify the string as "Secret Key", as a hint to the humans who might be moving the data around, and maybe to make it easier to write precautionary code like "hey it looks like your commit has a secret key in it, are you sure you want to push it?"
- swaraj 4mo ago
  this is actually a great idea + reason
benoau 4mo ago
I think Stripe started it long ago with "pk_" and "sk_" prefixes for public key and secret key.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  Fun fact! They weren't always prefixed. And then after someone spent hours pouring over the logs in Splunk, that's when they had the idea of prefixing then.
- swaraj 4mo ago
  that's actually a great reason / explanation. TY