secrets-rotation — an exposed secret is spent

Deleting the message, rewriting git history or redacting the log does not un-expose a secret: the transcript, the remote, the backup and the provider's own logs already hold it. The only fix is to make the exposed value worthless — revoke it and issue a new one.

What went wrong on real projects is not ignorance of that. It is that the rotation was remembered instead of tracked: "rotate the exchange API keys" was carried forward through seven session logs; "keys that passed through chat" appeared in seven summaries of another project; a monitoring token pasted in plain text was never rotated. Each session wrote the reminder again and nobody owned it.

The moment you see one

1. Never repeat the value. Not in your answer, not in a task title, not in a log, not in a commit message. Name its kind and where it is: "OpenRouter API key, in the operator's message of 22.09, 14:10". scripts/lib/secret-patterns.mjs names the kind.

2. Say it plainly, first line: this key is compromised; revoking it is the only fix.

3. Open one task, not a note — in Beads if the project has it:

   bd create "Rotate <kind> exposed in <where> on <date>" -t bug -p 0 \
     -d "Exposed: <where>. Revoke at <provider console>, issue new, store in <secret store>, redeploy <consumers>, prove the old one is rejected."
   

   Priority 0 for a production credential or anything that moves money; 1 otherwise.

4. If you can rotate it, rotate it — the operator asked you to handle it, or your task covers that system. If it needs the operator (a provider console you cannot reach, a hardware token), the task's first line says exactly what they must click.

Done means the old value is refused

A rotation is closed with evidence, not with "rotated":

• the new value is in the secret store the code reads — never in CLAUDE.md, preferences.md, memory files, a README or any file that is loaded into a model's context (one key in a preferences file reached 605 transcripts);
• every consumer was redeployed and uses it (deploy-landed, config check);
• a call with the old value fails — 401/403 from the provider. That is the proof.

Carrying it forward

An open rotation task older than 48 hours goes to the top of the next session's report and of /inbox, with its age. Do not re-list it in the session log as a fresh item — link the task. Re-writing a reminder is how the seven-session carry-over happened.