Key takeaways
- Rotate keys immediately if exposed.
- Never call paid LLM APIs from the browser without a backend proxy.
- Pixetech secures vibe-coded stacks from $500.
AI coding tools often paste API keys into frontend env vars because it is the fastest path to a working demo. Attackers scrape client bundles and Git history.
If you suspect exposure: rotate the key at the provider, invalidate old tokens, review billing for anomalies, and move calls to a server-side route with rate limiting.
Add secret scanning to CI so the mistake does not repeat.
This is the most common production incident we see on vibe-coded apps—and the fastest to fix if you act before abuse.
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