Questions & answers
Short answers, with a link to the long one.
The basics
What problem does Permaura actually solve?
Agents increasingly need to do things, and the naive way to let them is to hand over an API key. From that moment the secret is in the model's context, its logs, and its blast radius. Permaura sits in between: the agent calls a capability, Permaura checks policy, injects the real secret on your gateway, makes the call, and returns only the result. See How Permaura works.
What is a "gateway"?
The program that holds your keys, enforces policy, and makes the actual calls. One self-contained binary. It can run on your machine, on your machine behind a public URL, or on Permaura's infrastructure — the same binary in three placements.
Do I have to install anything?
No, if you pick Let Permaura host it. Otherwise it's one command, or the desktop app for macOS, Windows or Linux. See Connect a gateway.
Which AI clients work with it?
Any client that speaks MCP — Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, and others. Connect your AI client has the per-client detail.
Security
Can an agent ever read my API key?
No. Tools are named for what they do, and there is deliberately no capability that returns a secret. The gateway resolves the plaintext inside a single call, uses it, wipes it, and redacts it out of the response before the agent sees anything.
What stops a prompt injection from doing damage?
Policy, not trust in the model. An agent can ask for anything; only your grants decide what runs, and Permaura denies by default. An injected "refund everything" instruction hits the same wall a legitimate request would, and the refusal is recorded. See How a request is decided.
Are my secrets really never sent to Permaura?
With a local or tunnelled gateway, yes: the key is sealed on your machine and permaura.com is never in the request path. With hosted execution, a Permaura-run worker makes the call, so it necessarily decrypts the secret at that instant — which is why we say hosted is not zero-knowledge rather than pretending otherwise. The honesty rule is written down for exactly this reason.
Can Permaura see what my agents are doing?
Metadata about decisions, yes — that's what makes the console and audit views work. The contents of calls go directly between your gateway and the upstream API and don't pass through Permaura's servers when your gateway is local or tunnelled.
What if someone gets into my Permaura account?
They still can't extract a credential (nothing reads one back), and once you've paired a device they can't lower the approval bar with the session alone. On a local or tunnelled gateway that change can only be made from the machine running it. On a hosted gateway it needs a fresh password-and-second-factor sign-in, and while you still have a working approval device that device has to sign the change too, and a stolen session has neither. They could change grants, so protect the account with two-step verification or a passkey.
Could someone with my account enrol their own approval device?
On a local or tunnelled gateway, no: enrolling a signing key needs a command run on the machine your gateway runs on, which an account session doesn't get you.
On a hosted gateway there is no such machine, so the honest answer is narrower. Someone who can re-authenticate as you (password plus your second factor, not just a live session) can enrol the first device on a gateway that has none. Every device after that has to be confirmed by a device you already paired, which they don't hold. You're emailed either way, which tells you it happened but does not stop it. That's the reason the second factor matters more on hosted than anywhere else.
Is the audit log tamper-proof?
Tamper-evident, which is the honest word. Each entry is hash-chained and ed25519-signed, so an alteration or deletion breaks the chain and the console says so. It doesn't prevent someone with disk access from destroying the file; it makes destroying it impossible to hide.
Running it
What happens if my machine is asleep?
A local or tunnelled gateway can't answer, so calls to it fail — nothing is queued and nothing runs later without you. If agents need to reach your tools around the clock, that's what hosted execution is for.
What happens if permaura.com goes down?
Your local gateway keeps working. Registration is a one-time handshake, not a runtime dependency: once you're activated, a local gateway enforces policy and serves agents entirely offline. You'd lose the console and remote sign-in until we're back.
Can I run more than one gateway?
One per workspace. Extra workspaces (and so extra gateways) come with the paid plans — see Workspaces & organisations.
Can my team share this?
Yes, on Team: shared policies, unlimited members, role-based access, and per-workspace membership so someone can have access to one environment and not another.
Money
Is there a free tier?
Yes, and it isn't a trial. Local is free, unlimited, forever — the whole loop of connections, policies, grants and a signed audit log. The paid line is reach: a public URL for your gateway, hosted execution, more workspaces, team governance. See Plans.
Do I need a card to try a paid plan?
Yes, and nothing is charged until day 7. Cancel before then and you pay nothing.
What happens if I stop paying?
You drop to Free, not to nothing. The local loop keeps running; you lose the paid reach features. Hosted workers are paused during a grace period rather than torn down. See Trials & billing.
Getting unstuck
An agent says it can't do something. Why?
Deny-by-default is doing its job. Open the audit log: the denied entry names the capability and connection, which tells you what to allow. Troubleshooting walks the rest of the causes.
Something is running that shouldn't be. How do I stop it?
Hit the connection's kill switch, or stop the gateway. Both take effect immediately. Uninstall & reset covers the full set of off-switches.
How do I delete my account?
Settings → Account → Delete account. Password, then a confirmation link by email, then it's gone — including any organisation where you're the only member. Cancel a live subscription and hand over any organisation with other members first. See Uninstall & reset.
My question isn't here.
Search this site (press ⌘K), or email support@permaura.com.