CVE-2026-55538: PraisonAI: [Auth Bypass] `praisonai serve agents --api-key` is silently ignored — agent-invocation routes (`POST /agents`, `POST /agents/{agent_name}`) run unauthenticated

praisonai serve agents exposes HTTP routes that invoke registered agents. The CLI advertises --api-key with help text “API key for authentication”, parses it, and forwards it into ServeHandler. But _create_agents_app() never reads config["api_key"] again and installs no auth dependency or middleware on its direct routes. The configured key is a no-op flag.

As a result, an unauthenticated network caller can invoke exposed agents (POST /agents and POST /agents/{agent_name}) even when the operator passed --api-key. Requests with no credentials, a wrong Authorization: Bearer, a wrong X-API-Key, or an empty bearer all reach agent.start().

The failure is made sharper by the fact that a working auth dependency already exists in the same module — praisonai.api.agent_invoke.verify_token guards every /api/v1/... route with Depends(verify_token) and is mounted into the very same app. The direct n8n-compat routes simply do not use it.