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Authentication

Overview

HCLI supports two authentication methods:

  • OAuth (interactive login)
  • API Keys (recommended for automation)

Use the OAuth method for interactive systems, like your primary workstation. HCLI will open a browser window so that you can sign into my.hex-rays.com and link your account. You can subsequently link other accounts and switch between them on-demand.

The API key method is best for automated environments, such as running HCLI in a Docker container or CI/CD environment. You'll generate an API key and keep it secure, passing it to HCLI via an environment variable (HCLI_API_KEY).

OAuth Authentication

hcli login

This will open your browser to complete the authentication flow, or you can use a one time password email flow. 

hcli logout

API Key Authentication

Creating an API Key:

hcli auth key create --name "hcli-test-key"
The key will be displayed only once, so make sure to save it in a secure place.
? Do you want to create a new API key hcli-test-key? (Y/n) Yes
API key created: hrp-1-fdsafdsafdsafdafdsafdsafdfasdssda
? Do you want to use this key for hcli? (Y/n) No

Install an existing key (or use HCLI_API_KEY environment variable):

hcli auth key install <api-key, hrp-1-fdsafdasfdasfdsafda...>

List your API keys:

hcli auth key list
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                 ┃ Created     ┃ Last Used      ┃ Requests ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ hcli-test-key        │ Oct 24 2025 │ never          │        0 │
│ zydis-gh-actions     │ Oct 09 2025 │ 14 days ago    │       45 │
│ binexport-gh-actions │ Oct 06 2025 │ 16 days ago    │       49 │
│ bindiff-gh-actions   │ Oct 02 2025 │ 16 days ago    │      180 │
│ goomba-gh-actions    │ Oct 02 2025 │ 21 days ago    │       56 │
│ zydisinfo-gh-actions │ Aug 29 2025 │ just now       │      316 │
│ hcli-gh-actions      │ Aug 25 2025 │ 11 minutes ago │    44200 │
└──────────────────────┴─────────────┴────────────────┴──────────┘

Revoke an API key:

hcli auth key revoke
? Select API key to revoke: (Use arrow keys)
 » hcli-test-key (Created: 2025-10-24, Requests: 0)
   zydis-gh-actions (Created: 2025-10-09, Requests: 45)
   binexport-gh-actions (Created: 2025-10-06, Requests: 49)
   bindiff-gh-actions (Created: 2025-10-02, Requests: 180)
   goomba-gh-actions (Created: 2025-10-02, Requests: 56)
   zydisinfo-gh-actions (Created: 2025-08-29, Requests: 317)
   hcli-gh-actions (Created: 2025-08-25, Requests: 44200)
? Do you want to revoke the key named 'hcli-test-key'? Yes
Revoking API key 'hcli-test-key'...
API key 'hcli-test-key' has been revoked

Verify Authentication

Check your authentication status: 

hcli whoami
You are logged in as user@example.com using an API key from HCLI_API_KEY environment variable

Environment Variables

You can also set your API key via environment variable: 

export HCLI_API_KEY=hrp-1-fdsafdsafdsafdsafdsa....

Next Steps