HashiCorp Vault (and other enterprise-grade managers) are incredibly powerful — but also heavy. For many AI/ML projects I’ve seen, people don’t need the full ecosystem: they just want to stop hardcoding API keys in .env files and have an easy way to rotate/retrieve them.

Vault-AI is aimed at that use case:

Lightweight & fast to start → git clone → ./start.sh gets you running in 2 minutes with Docker + Postgres.

AI-first focus → tenants + token-based auth designed for AI agents, LLM apps, RAG pipelines.

Simple CLI → no steep learning curve; just vault-ai store/get/rotate/audit.

Self-contained → no external cloud dependencies, runs locally or on your infra.

If you’re running a large enterprise with complex RBAC, PKI, dynamic secrets → HashiCorp Vault is the gold standard. If you’re building AI apps and just need a safe, self-hosted digital safe for API keys, tokens, and secrets, Vault-AI is a quicker fit.