13 services · 9 of them hold something worth stealing

Every account, and exactly what it wants.

The raw material a manifest is assembled from. Each record names the real scope, the real free allowance, and the date that allowance was last read from the vendor.

Figures drift

Every allowance below carries the date it was read from the vendor’s own pricing page. None of them is a promise about today. If you find one that has moved, say which and it gets corrected here for everybody.

Where the code lives

GitHub

Holds the repository your assistant commits to, and the history you need when a change turns out to be wrong.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: A fine-grained token scoped to ONE repository: Contents read/write, plus Workflows only if it will edit CI.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: Unlimited public and private repositories for individuals.
Without it: Your assistant writes files that exist on one machine and nowhere else, with no way back from a bad edit.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Where it runs

Vercel

Builds the site on every push and serves it, with a preview URL per branch.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: Install the GitHub app on the one repository. No account-wide token is needed for ordinary deploys.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: Hobby: 100 GB bandwidth a month, non-commercial use only.
Without it: The site builds locally and nobody else can open it.

Where the data sits

Supabase

Postgres with row-level security, plus the auth service if people sign in.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: Publishable (anon) key for the browser. The service-role key is server-only and must never reach client code.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: Two projects, 500 MB database each. Paused after a week with no requests.
Without it: Nothing is remembered between visits. Forms can still send email, but there is no account and no saved work.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Upstash Redis

Shared counter for rate limits, so a login or contact endpoint is throttled across every server instance rather than per-instance.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: A REST token scoped to one database. Server-side only.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: 10,000 commands a day.
Without it: Rate limiting falls back to per-instance memory, which resets on every cold start and is a speed bump rather than a wall.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Who people are

Google sign-in

Lets people sign in with the Google account they already have, so there is no new password to forget or for you to store.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: An OAuth 2.0 client ID and secret, with the redirect URI fixed to your domain. Scopes: openid, email, profile — nothing more.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: No charge for sign-in.
Without it: Everyone needs a password, which means you inherit hashing, resets and lockout — all of it your problem.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Taking money

Stripe

Takes card payments and runs subscriptions, hosted on Stripe's own checkout so card numbers never touch your site.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: Restricted API key: write on Checkout Sessions and read on Customers. Plus a webhook signing secret.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: No monthly fee. Roughly 2.9% + 30c per successful charge.
Without it: You can show a price but cannot take the money.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Sending mail

Resend

Sends the mail your site generates: contact replies, receipts, sign-in links.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: An API key with Sending access only. Plus DNS records on your domain so the mail is not treated as forged.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day.
Without it: A contact form that collects a message and delivers it nowhere, which is worse than having no form.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

Files and images

Cloudinary

Stores uploads and returns resized, correctly formatted images instead of the 4 MB original.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: An unsigned upload preset restricted by format and size for the browser. The API secret stays on the server.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: 25 credits a month, around 25 GB of storage and delivery.
Without it: Images are committed into the repository and served at full size, which is slow and gets worse every upload.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

The address

Cloudflare

Runs DNS for the domain and sits in front of the site for caching and basic abuse filtering.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: An API token scoped to Zone:DNS:Edit on the single zone. Never a global API key — that one can do everything.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: DNS, TLS and the standard proxy at no charge.
Without it: DNS is edited by hand at the registrar, and every change waits on whatever TTL was set.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

A domain registrar

Owns the name itself. Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare Registrar — the choice matters less than knowing which one it is.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: Nothing automated is needed. Point the nameservers once, by hand, and keep the login somewhere you will find it.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: None. Expect 10 to 40 a year depending on the ending.
Without it: The site lives at a hosting subdomain, which is fine to start and awkward to change once people have linked to it.

Knowing what happened

Google Analytics 4

Counts visits and shows which pages people actually reach.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: A measurement ID. It is public by design and ships in the client bundle — the one class of key that belongs in source.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: No charge at the volumes a new site produces.
Without it: You are guessing about what people did, which usually means rebuilding the part nobody used.

Sentry

Catches the errors real visitors hit, with the stack trace and the steps that led there.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: A DSN for the browser, which is public by design, and an auth token used only at build time to upload source maps.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: 5,000 errors a month on the developer plan.
Without it: You find out something is broken when somebody bothers to tell you.

The assistant itself

Anthropic

The model your assistant runs on, if it is not already paid for through a Claude subscription.

Where to set it up ↗

Grant exactly: An API key held by your assistant on your machine. It is never entered into a website, including this one.
Free allowance · read 2026-08-24: None. Pay per token, and set a spend cap on day one rather than after the first surprise.
Without it: Nothing to hand the manifest to. The list is still worth having, but you are building it yourself.
Handle carefully: This credential can move money, read private data, or push code. Scope it to one project, keep it server-side, and rotate it rather than deleting it if it ever leaks.

You will not need all 13.

Most builds need four or five. The interview works out which.

Work out mine →Questions