Scanner API Keys

With an Enterprise plan, you can access either the HoundDog.ai Cloud Platform or the HoundDog.ai Self-Hosted Platform and generate an API key for the code scanner. The Enterprise plan unlocks paid features such as source code integrations for rolling out CI configuration across your organization’s repos, automated privacy reporting, including org wide RoPA and PIAs, custom allowlists and rules for data elements and data sinks, full language coverage, and additional output formats.

Generating a New API Key

Log in to the HoundDog.ai Cloud Platform and navigate to the API Keys page. There are two kinds of keys — see API Keys for details:

• Personal API keys (prefixed hd_pk_) are for everyday use, such as development on your personal device.
• Organization API keys (prefixed hd_ok_) are for CI/CD pipelines and shared automation.

Click Create to create a key. The key value is displayed only once, at creation time — copy it immediately and store it securely.

Using the API Key

Export the key in the HOUNDDOG_API_KEY environment variable in your shell configuration file (for example ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):

~/.zshrc

# Remember to reload your shell to let the newly added line take effect.
export HOUNDDOG_API_KEY="your_hounddog_api_key_here"

Alternatively, put it in the scanner’s configuration file at ~/.config/hounddog/.env (%APPDATA%\hounddog\.env on Windows):

~/.config/hounddog/.env

export HOUNDDOG_API_KEY='your_hounddog_api_key_here'

After reloading your shell, the scanner picks up the key automatically. Scan results are then uploaded to the Cloud Platform, and the scan output prints a link to view them online:

bash

hounddog scan /path/to/repository

If you are using the Docker image, pass the environment variable into the container with -e:

bash

docker run -v /path/to/repo:/data -e HOUNDDOG_API_KEY=$HOUNDDOG_API_KEY hounddogai/hounddog hounddog scan

Note

If your user account belongs to multiple HoundDog.ai organizations, also set the HOUNDDOG_ORG_ID environment variable to select the organization. You can find the organization ID in the platform under Settings → Organization.

Disabling the Upload

When a valid HOUNDDOG_API_KEY is present, scan results are automatically uploaded to the Cloud Platform. To keep the key active (for cloud rules and paid features) but skip the upload for a run, use the --no-cloud-upload flag:

bash

hounddog scan --no-cloud-upload

To ignore the Cloud Platform entirely for a run — no settings download and no upload — use --no-cloud (alias --local):

bash

hounddog scan --no-cloud

Caution

--no-cloud also disables the paid-plan output formats for that run: sarif, gitlab, and checkmarx fail with a paid-plan error even when HOUNDDOG_API_KEY is set. Use --no-cloud-upload instead when you only want to skip the upload.