# Securing and operating agents Source: https://blog.derio.net/frank/topics/securing-agents/ Published: 2026-09-05 Updated: 2026-09-05 Workstations, orchestration, identity, and the boundaries around autonomous tools. ## Building Frank Follow the implementation, from bare metal to working services. 8 Mar 2026 ### [Secrets Management — Infisical + External Secrets Operator](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/09-secrets/) Replacing the SOPS-only secrets workflow with Infisical + ESO — and the three Infisical chart bugs that forced splitting one app into three. 10 Mar 2026 ### [Agentic Control Plane — Sympozium](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/11-agentic-control-plane/) A Kubernetes-native control plane where every AI agent is a Pod, every policy is a CRD, and every execution is a Job — orchestrated by Sympozium. 11 Mar 2026 ### [Unified Auth — Authentik SSO for the Entire Cluster](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/13-unified-auth/) One identity provider for every service — Authentik brings OIDC SSO to ArgoCD, Grafana, and Infisical, forward-auth proxy to Longhorn, Hubble, and the Tekton Dashboard, and OIDC-backed kubectl access. 14 Mar 2026 ### [Paperclip — An AI Agent Orchestrator on Frank](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/15-paperclip/) Deploying Paperclip — an AI orchestrator that organises agents into virtual companies with org charts and budgets — alongside Sympozium, to compare two fundamentally different agentic paradigms. 24 Mar 2026 ### [Persistent Agent — A Kali Workstation on Kubernetes](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/18-persistent-agent/) Deploying a persistent Kali Linux container on gpu-1 as an always-on Claude Code workstation — because laptops sleep and mobile apps have limits. 31 Mar 2026 ### [Secure Agent Pod — Hardening an AI Coding Workstation](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/21-secure-agent-pod/) Rebuilding the Kali workstation as a hardened, non-root pod with layered defenses — because giving an AI agent skip-permissions demands more than trust. 13 Apr 2026 ### [VK Relay — Tunneling the Browser to a Local Agent Server](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/25-vk-relay/) Deploying a relay server sidecar to tunnel the VK remote web UI through to the local agent's workspace data — because a dashboard that cannot show your work is not a dashboard. 13 Apr 2026 ### [VK Remote — Self-Hosting the Kanban Backend Before the Cloud Dies](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/26-vk-remote-self-host/) The VibeKanban cloud announced shutdown with 30 days' notice. This is how we deployed the self-hosted remote crate — PostgreSQL, ElectricSQL, and a Rust API — before the lights went out. 3 May 2026 ### [Ruflo — A Swarm Orchestrator Next to Paperclip](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/29-ruflo/) Standing up ruvnet's claude-flow as a 24/7 hybrid pod — a ruvocal web UI plus a shell sidecar — to run as the chaotic-swarm counterpoint to Paperclip's org-chart agents. 11 Jul 2026 ### [Rebuilding the Hermes Shell on the Official Image, With a Hindsight Memory Sidecar](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/building/33-hermes-shell/) Retiring the custom agent-shell image and rebuilding hermes on Nous Research's official hermes-agent image as a three-container pod — bare official image, an SSH sidecar, and a self-hosted Hindsight memory backend. ## Operating on Frank Check health, investigate failures, and recover the system. 13 Mar 2026 ### [Operating on Secrets](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/06-secrets/) Day-to-day commands for managing secrets in Infisical, checking ESO sync status, handling SOPS-encrypted bootstrap secrets, and recovering from the real gotchas that have bitten us. 13 Mar 2026 ### [Operating on Authentication](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/08-auth/) Day-to-day commands for managing Authentik SSO, checking OIDC flows, rotating client secrets, and debugging the forward-auth redirect loop that redirects to 0.0.0.0. 31 Mar 2026 ### [Operating on Secure Agent Pod](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/14-secure-agent-pod/) Day-to-day commands for managing the secure agent pod — SSH access, process health, s6-overlay supervision, VibeKanban, GitHub App token auth, and recovering from the gotchas we've shipped. 9 Apr 2026 ### [Operating on Paperclip](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/18-paperclip/) Checking Paperclip health, database access and secret sync, handling the RWO PVC constraint, and bootstrapping the pure-upstream instance after the 2026-10 fresh start. 11 Apr 2026 ### [Git Credentials Without a Shell](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/19-git-credentials-without-a-shell/) Why $GITHUB_TOKEN is set in your terminal but missing in VS Code's git — and a credential helper that fixes it permanently by reading /proc/1/environ. 13 Apr 2026 ### [Operating on VK Relay](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/20-vk-relay/) VK relay server health checks, tunnel status, re-pairing, and troubleshooting the browser-to-agent connection. 13 Apr 2026 ### [Operating on VK Remote](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/21-vk-remote/) Self-hosted VK Remote stack — PostgreSQL health, ElectricSQL sync status, API verification, and troubleshooting. 3 May 2026 ### [Operating on Ruflo](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/24-ruflo/) Connecting via SSH/Mosh, curating the inventory ConfigMap, bumping images, backups, and a worked swarm-run cookbook. 11 Jul 2026 ### [Operating the Hermes Shell With Its Hindsight Memory Sidecar](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/operating/28-hermes-shell/) Checking the Hindsight memory sidecar's health, the two-tier memory backup story, the claude-code retain provider, and the pg_restore mechanic. ## The Frank Papers Compare approaches, examine the evidence, and understand the trade-offs. 20 May 2026 ### [Secrets Management Without the Bootstrap Chicken-and-Egg](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/papers/09-secrets-bootstrap/) Secrets management is a five-job problem — storage, distribution, rotation, audit, and the bootstrap chicken-and-egg — and the six contenders in 2026 (Infisical, ESO +… 19 May 2026 ### [Identity for a Heterogeneous Stack](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/papers/11-identity-heterogeneous-stack/) Ten web UIs, three CLIs, and a gRPC service all want to ask the same question: who's on the other side of this URL? The identity-provider slot has seven serious vendors —… 20 May 2026 ### [Agentic Orchestration & Safe Agent Workstations](https://blog.derio.net/frank/docs/papers/17-agentic-orchestration/) Agent orchestration is a four-job problem — isolation, persistent state, access, and fleet dispatch — and the six contenders in 2026 (secure-agent-pod, VibeKanban, Paperclip +…