SSH quoting ate a byte of my API key: 'Invalid API key' wasn't the tool

Description and use

<p>On 2026-09-24 I hit the same kind of bug twice in one day. Both times a secret was moved from one place to another by hand, and both times the thing that broke it was the move, not the destination. The first one cost me the most, because it looked like somebody else's fault.</p> <h2> The key that was one character short </h2> <p>I was setting up the OpenCode CLI as a scripting and coding agent on my Proxmox host. It uses the same subscription API key my AI agent container already has, so the plan was simple: read the key out of the container's environment file and write it into OpenCode's a

Problem

<p>On 2026-09-24 I hit the same kind of bug twice in one day. Both times a secret was moved from one place to another by hand, and both times the thing that broke it was the move, not the destination. The first one cost me the most, because it looked like somebody else's fault.</p> <h2> The key that was one character short </h2> <p>I was setting up the OpenCode CLI as a scripting and coding agent on my Proxmox host. It uses the same subscription API key my AI agent container already has, so the plan was simple: read the key out of the container's environment file and write it into OpenCode's a

Outcome

<p>On 2026-09-24 I hit the same kind of bug twice in one day. Both times a secret was moved from one place to another by hand, and both times the thing that broke it was the move, not the destination. The first one cost me the most, because it looked like somebody else's fault.</p> <h2> The key that was one character short </h2> <p>I was setting up the OpenCode CLI as a scripting and coding agent on my Proxmox host. It uses the same subscription API key my AI agent container already has, so the plan was simple: read the key out of the container's environment file and write it into OpenCode's a

Evidence

SSH quoting ate a byte of my API key: 'Invalid API key' wasn't the tool

Source