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Tokens & credits

  • Access tokens (PATs) authenticate you (the CLI) to the control node.
  • Credits pay for the agent's LLM calls (and any compute AutoLab rents for you). You never supply an LLM provider key.

Signing in

autolab login      # browser sign-in; stores a token for this host
autolab whoami     # show the active host and signed-in user
autolab logout     # remove the stored token for this host

Tokens are stored per host in ~/.config/autolab/credentials.json (owner-only), so logins to different hosts coexist without clobbering each other.

Headless login

On a remote box, CI runner, or anywhere without a browser, pass a token directly:

autolab login --token "$AUTOLAB_TOKEN"

Or skip storage entirely and let the environment variable carry it for a single command — for control-node requests, AUTOLAB_TOKEN is used ahead of any stored login:

AUTOLAB_TOKEN=al_… autolab serve

Personal access tokens

A PAT is the same credential the browser login mints — a revocable token that acts as you on every project you can access. Manage them from the CLI or the dashboard's Access Tokens tab.

autolab token                        # print the token you're authenticated with
autolab token create --name gpu-box  # mint a fresh, named token (prints it once)
autolab token ls                     # list your tokens
autolab token revoke gpu-box         # revoke by name or id-prefix

Prefer a named token create over the bare print, so you can revoke just that one later. Pipe tokens, don't paste them where they'll be logged:

TOK=$(autolab token create --name gpu-box)
ssh gpubox "AUTOLAB_TOKEN=$TOK autolab serve"

Researcher+ for compute nodes

Registering an compute node clones private code, so the token must belong to a researcher, admin, or owner on that project.

Credits

The agent needs an LLM to write code and analyze results. AutoLab runs every model call on its own credentials and bills it to your AutoLab credits; there is nothing to set up, and you cannot bring your own LLM provider key. Every climb you start bills your credits. The dashboard's Credits page shows your balance and usage and takes top-ups.

Next: Drive the agent, or attach compute with Compute.