How We Built Process-Tree Agent Detection

How do you tell if a human or an AI agent is requesting a secret? This question sits at the center of NoxKey's security model. An AI agent needs your Stripe key to make API calls. A human needs it to paste somewhere. Both call noxkey get. But the response should be fundamentally different — because what happens after delivery depends entirely on who's asking. A human uses the value and moves on. An agent ingests it into a conversation context where it can be logged, echoed in debug output, included in generated code, or stored in a chat history on someone else's server. Same secret, wildly different risk profiles. We spent two weeks building the process tree detection system that powers NoxKey's agent access control. Here's exactly how it works, where it breaks, and why imperfect detection still beats no detection at all. CLI noxkey get Detection --> Agent Detection Process Tree Walker Dual Verification Menu Bar --> Unix Socket Menu Bar App Server + Touch ID Keychain --> Keych