Forward Proxy

A network gateway that intercepts outbound requests from a client and forwards them to the destination server. In security architectures, forward proxies serve as control points for enforcing policies on outgoing traffic.

In shiftagent’s zero-trust architecture, the forward proxy is the only component that can resolve vault aliases to real credentials. When an AI agent makes an outbound API call using an alias like @merchant_api_key, the forward proxy intercepts the request, resolves the alias from the vault, injects the real credential, forwards the request, and strips the credential from the response. This ensures the LLM reasoning layer never sees real secrets.