Secret Placeholder Conventions

Use placeholders that are human-readable but do not resemble real secrets.

Recommended style

• Prefer descriptive values like example-openai-key-not-real or example-discord-bot-token.
• For shell snippets, prefer ${OPENAI_API_KEY} over inline token-like strings.
• Keep examples obviously fake and scoped to purpose (provider, channel, auth type).

Avoid these patterns in docs

• Literal PEM private-key header or footer text.
• Prefixes that resemble live credentials, e.g. sk-..., xoxb-..., AKIA....
• Realistic-looking bearer tokens copied from runtime logs.

Example

# Good
export OPENAI_API_KEY="example-openai-key-not-real"

# Better (when the doc is about env wiring)
export OPENAI_API_KEY="${OPENAI_API_KEY}"