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A service account represents a non-human or machine identity that can automate common tasks across teams and projects. Service accounts are ideal for CI/CD pipelines, automated training jobs, and other machine-to-machine workflows. Service accounts provide the following key benefits:
  • No license consumption: Service accounts donโ€™t consume user seats or licenses.
  • Dedicated API keys: Secure credentials for automated workflows.
  • User attribution: Optionally attribute automated runs to human users.
  • Enterprise-ready: Built for production automation at scale.
  • Delegated operations: Service accounts operate on behalf of the user or organization that creates them.
Service accounts are useful for tracking automated jobs logged to W&B, such as periodic retraining and nightly builds. To associate a username with one of these machine-launched runs, use the environment variables WANDB_USERNAME or WANDB_USER_EMAIL. For comprehensive information about service accounts, including best practices and detailed setup instructions, see Use service accounts to automate workflows. For information about how service accounts behave in team contexts, see Team service account behavior. The following steps describe how to create a team service account. To create a new team-scoped service account and API key:
  1. In your teamโ€™s settings, click Service Accounts.
  2. Click New Team Service Account.
  3. Provide a name for the service account.
  4. Set Authentication Method to Generate API key (default). If you select Federated Identity, the service account cannot own API keys.
  5. Click Create.
  6. Find the service account you just created.
  7. Click the action () menu, then click Create API key.
  8. Provide a name for the API key, then click Create.
  9. Copy the API key and store it securely.
  10. Click Done.
Apart from the Built-in service accounts, W&B also supports External service accounts using identity federation for SDK and CLI. Use external service accounts if you want to automate W&B tasks using service identities managed in your identity provider that can issue JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
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