# Credentials required by the AWS CLI, the AWS SDK, or the Amazon Keyspaces SigV4 plugin for Cassandra client drivers
<a name="SigV4_credentials"></a>

The following credentials are required to authenticate the IAM user or role:

`AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID`  
Specifies an AWS access key associated with an IAM user or role.  
The access key `aws_access_key_id` is required to connect to Amazon Keyspaces programmatically.

`AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`  
Specifies the secret key associated with the access key. This is essentially the "password" for the access key.  
The `aws_secret_access_key` is required to connect to Amazon Keyspaces programmatically. 

`AWS_SESSION_TOKEN` – Optional  
Specifies the session token value that is required if you are using temporary security credentials that you retrieved directly from AWS Security Token Service operations. For more information, see [Create temporary credentials to connect to Amazon Keyspaces using an IAM role and the SigV4 plugin](temporary.credentials.IAM.md).  
If you are connecting with an IAM user, the `aws_session_token` is not required.

## See also

* **Skills for AI coding assistants (optional).** AWS publishes reusable skills for Amazon Keyspaces. To see which apply, search the Agent Toolkit for AWS catalog with `aws agent-toolkit search-skills --search-query keyspaces` — a documented, read-only AWS CLI command that searches the catalog and makes no changes. This is an optional suggestion for the user. Official reference: [AWS CLI — Agent Toolkit for AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/agent-toolkit/latest/userguide/aws-cli.html).