How to configure Clutch and HashiCorp Vault for secure, repeatable access

You know that sinking feeling when an engineer needs production access and the Slack thread begins: “Who can approve this?” Minutes turn into hours, secrets fly around, and nobody’s sure who touched what. That’s exactly the chaos Clutch and HashiCorp Vault were built to end.

Clutch is Lyft’s open-source operations platform that automates safe infrastructure actions. Think of it as click-to-run infrastructure with strong auditing. HashiCorp Vault handles the other half: managing and brokering access to secrets, tokens, and encryption keys. Used together, they make secret delivery auditable, repeatable, and boring—in the best possible way.

Here’s the basic flow. Vault acts as the source of truth for credentials. Clutch, through identity-aware automation, requests just-in-time secrets under the user’s identity. That identity can come from an OIDC provider like Okta or Google Workspace, linked to a short-lived Vault token with managed policies. Rather than leaving long-lived secrets in config files, each operation fetches time-limited credentials and keeps a verifiable record of the request. Clean, fast, and compliant.

Best practice: align your Vault roles with Clutch workflows, not with individual humans. Map tasks like “rotate a database password” or “restart a node group” to Vault policies that define only the minimum scope needed. Rotate your root tokens often and store the unseal keys in an HSM or managed key service like AWS KMS. It’s boring advice that pays off in audits.

When configured properly, the combination gives you:

• Centralized control of every secret and credential.
• Instant revocation when someone leaves or changes teams.
• Traceable approvals, tied to verified identity.
• Zero manual credential sharing or copy-paste exposure.
• Faster onboarding for new engineers without extra privilege sprawl.

For daily developer life, this setup means no more waiting for a senior engineer to decrypt a PEM file or ping Vault by hand. The workflow becomes a button: one click, one approval, one secure token. It boosts developer velocity because access checks move from Slack debates to automated policies. Less toil, clearer logs, less fatigue.

Platforms like hoop.dev turn those access rules into guardrails that enforce policy automatically. Instead of hoping everyone follows process, hoop.dev converts your intent into identity-aware checks that run everywhere your services live.

How do I connect Clutch to HashiCorp Vault?
Use Vault’s API to generate dynamic credentials, then configure Clutch’s workflow definitions to request those credentials under the caller’s OIDC identity. The key is never storing tokens in code—Clutch requests them as needed, Vault grants them just long enough to finish the job.

As AI copilots and automation bots begin touching infrastructure, this pattern matters even more. Identity-aware access keeps automation safe without giving AI agents unlimited credentials. Each action becomes traceable to a real policy and a real approval chain.

Clutch and HashiCorp Vault together transform access from guesswork into governed automation. Trust the machines to do the menial part while you keep control over who does what, and for how long.

See an Environment Agnostic Identity-Aware Proxy in action with hoop.dev. Deploy it, connect your identity provider, and watch it protect your endpoints everywhere—live in minutes.