# The secret store **Status: BUILT 2026-08-13.** `src/databases/officer_db/src/secret-store.ts`, with `jwt.ts` and `crypto.ts` reading from it and `officer-setup.sh` section 7 bootstrapping it. Rotation is NOT built — the schema carries `retired_at` and the API exposes `retiredKeys()`, but nothing retires or re-encrypts yet. A small SQLite database holding every encryption and signing key the platform uses. It replaced `VAULT_STORE_KEY` and `JWT_SECRET` in `.env`, and it is the facility a plugin uses instead of inventing its own. **One change from the design below: keys are per PURPOSE, not one key for everything.** The original plan moved a single at-rest key into the store. What shipped gives `headscale`, `wallet`, `photos`, `jellyfin`, `invoiceshelf`, `vault` and `service-connections` a key each, so one leaked key opens one plugin's columns rather than all seven. `jwt` is the eighth. A core install bootstraps two — `jwt` and `headscale` — and every other purpose is created when its plugin first asks. --- ## What is wrong with today Nothing is insecure. The separation is already right — the thing worth keeping is stated first so it is not lost in a refactor: > **Secrets live in Postgres. The key that opens them does not.** That is why `officer_db/src/crypto.ts` reads `VAULT_STORE_KEY` from the environment, and it is what makes `keys.ts:26` true: *"a stolen database dump is useless without .env, a stolen .env is useless without the passphrase"*. What is wrong is narrower, and it is about **blast radius across processes**. `.env` sits in the repository root, and Bun auto-loads it. `ecosystem.config.cjs` says so in as many words — it is the reason the Anthropic credential was moved out of the main process. So today `VAULT_STORE_KEY` is present in the environment of **all twenty pm2 processes**. `officer-music` holds the key that decrypts wallet seed envelopes. Anything that can read `/proc//environ` for those processes has it, and nineteen of them have no reason to. The second problem is that changing the key is currently unrecoverable rather than an operation. See [Rotation](#rotation). --- ## What the key actually protects Worth listing, because it is wider than the name suggests. Everything below is AES-256-GCM ciphertext in Postgres, encrypted through `officer_db/src/crypto.ts` with a key derived as `SHA-256(VAULT_STORE_KEY)`: | column | what it is | | --- | --- | | `headscale_servers.api_key` | a Headscale **admin** credential — the schema notes it "can delete every node on a tailnet" | | `service_connections.secret` | every upstream credential the app store stores: gitea, memos, slskd, transmission | | `jellyfin_servers.access_token` | Jellyfin session token | | `wallets.config` | node credentials — macaroon, rune, LNDHub password, NWC URI. Spending authority | | `wallets.seed_envelope` | a BIP39 mnemonic, already sealed under an owner passphrase, encrypted **again** with this key | `decryptSecret` throws when the key does not verify, so a wrong key is not a degraded mode — it is every one of those becoming unreadable at once. The seed envelope is the only one protected by a second, independent secret (the owner passphrase, never persisted). Everything else in that table has exactly one lock. --- ## Decisions ### 1. The store is SQLite, in the install, outside Postgres Keys cannot live in the database they unlock. A dump would then contain both the ciphertext and the thing that opens it, and the property quoted at the top stops being true. Encrypting the key with a second key only moves the question — eventually exactly one secret has to be readable without any other secret, and the only real decision is *where it lives*. SQLite rather than a flat file, for one reason that is not secrecy: **rotation needs key versions.** A rotation has to decrypt with the old key and re-encrypt with the new, and an interrupted rotation needs both to still exist. That is a table with `id, purpose, key, created_at, retired_at`, and it is awkward as an environment variable or a single-value file. Concurrent access from several sidecars is the second reason; SQLite's locking is the part a hand-rolled file store gets wrong. ### 2. It is NOT encrypted at rest — and that decision changed shape **As built, the file IS the secret.** Keys are stored as they are used, with no second key unlocking them, because a key sitting beside the store it opens buys nothing: whoever can read one can read the other. The boundary is `0700` on the directory, `0600` on the file, owned by the service user. That answers open question 4 below — nothing stays outside, and `.env` holds no secret at all. The original reasoning for encrypted-values-in-a-plaintext-file is kept below because the SQLCipher finding is still true and still the reason whole-file encryption is not on the table. #### The original note Checked rather than assumed, because `PRAGMA key` appears to work and does not: ``` $ bun --eval 'db.exec("PRAGMA key = \"supersecret\""); … insert …' read without key: THE-SECRET-VALUE strings enc.db | grep THE-SECRET-VALUE -> found ``` Stock SQLite **silently ignores unknown pragmas**, so `PRAGMA key` succeeds, encrypts nothing, and the value sits in the file in plaintext. `bun:sqlite` ships stock SQLite 3.53.0, not SQLCipher. Whole-file encryption therefore needs SQLCipher, which means a native module — and this project already knows what one of those costs, since node-pty has no Linux prebuild and compiles from source on every machine. So the store holds **encrypted values in an unencrypted file**, the same shape as the Postgres columns. What leaks is metadata: which purposes have keys, and when they were rotated. That is an acceptable trade and it is written down here so nobody later assumes the file is opaque. `[open]` SQLCipher, if the native-dependency cost ever becomes worth paying. ### 3. Where the file goes **`$OFFICER_ROOT/secrets/officer-keys.db`** — a sibling of `platform/` and `data/`, decided 2026-08-13. **Not in `$OFFICER_ROOT/data/`.** That directory holds managed homes and attachments — it is the one people back up. A key store that travels in the same tarball as a database dump rebuilds the exact problem this design exists to avoid. The setup script says so out loud when it creates the store, because "back this up, but not next to the other thing you back up" is not a rule anyone infers. ### 4. ~~One secret remains outside~~ — none does Answered 2026-08-13: **no secret remains in `.env`.** The store file is the secret, per decision 2. The point of the exercise still holds, and it was always about blast radius rather than secrecy: **N secrets in twenty process environments becomes a file read on demand by the few processes that need it.** `.env` is auto-loaded by bun into every pm2 process, so a key there is readable from `/proc//environ` of twenty processes — `officer-music` held the key that decrypts wallet seed envelopes. A file opened by the two or three processes that actually use a key does not. ### 5. What moves in - `VAULT_STORE_KEY` — **split into one key per purpose**, rather than moved. See the status note at the top: the table above is seven unrelated things, and one key for all of them meant one leak opened all of them. - `JWT_SECRET` — a signing key rather than an encryption key, but it has the same properties: must survive restarts, must never be regenerated silently, and benefits from versioning during a rotation. Leaving one in a store and one in `.env` would be the scattering this is meant to end. - **The anthropic proxy secret**, purpose `anthropic-proxy`. Agreed 2026-08-12. Neither an encryption key nor a signing key — a bearer credential, generated once by `ensureProxySecret` and presented by `officer-agent` to `officer-anthropic-proxy` on `127.0.0.1`. It qualifies on the same three properties: generated once, shared between two processes, fatal to regenerate silently. It is in the store for a sharper reason than the other two, though. It is not in `.env` today — it is in `$DATA_PATH/sidecar/claude-state.json`, mixed in with session records. That is the one location [decision 3](#3-where-the-file-goes) rules out by name: `DATA_PATH` is what people back up, so the secret already travels in the same tarball as the data it protects. **Naming.** It is called `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` in `ensureAnthropicEnv`, and that name is wrong in both halves — it is not Anthropic's and it is not an API key. Anthropic's real credential is the OAuth token in `~/.claude/.credentials.json`, which the proxy swaps this one for on the way out. Our name for it is **anthropic-proxy-secret** everywhere we control. The exception is the last line before the spawn. `claude` reads the variable `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` and format-checks the `sk-ant-api03-` prefix, so both are the CLI's contract rather than ours and both stay. That one assignment keeps the CLI's name, with a comment saying why. --- ## Core, and plugins The store is core infrastructure, created at first boot. It is **not** a side effect of installing any one sidecar — it exists on a machine that installs nothing, so that a plugin installed in six months finds it already there. The core is what `ecosystem.light.config.cjs` runs today — `officer`, `officer-anthropic-proxy`, `officer-agent`, `officer-opencode`, `officer-pty` — **plus `officer-headscale`**. Headscale is core for a stated reason rather than by preference: `CLAUDE.md` says the tailnet *is* the perimeter — origin checking was removed on 2026-08-13 precisely because the tailnet is what stands in its place, so the tailnet is now load-bearing rather than one layer of two. A security model that rests on the tailnet cannot treat administering the tailnet as an optional extra. Vaultwarden and the wallet are not load-bearing that way — nothing else stops working without them — so they become plugins. Moving headscale into the light profile also removes it from the app store automatically: `catalogue.test.ts` asserts the catalogue equals `full − light`, so the test fails until the entry is deleted. That derivation is doing its job and should not be worked around. Headscale is then the store's **first user**, not its creator — `headscale_servers.api_key` is the first core credential needing a key. --- ## The contract What a plugin gets, and is bound by. To be written properly when the first one uses it; the shape is: - **Ask for a key by purpose**, not by name. `getKey('vault')` returns the active key for that purpose, creating one on first use. - **Never hold it.** Read it at the point of use. A key cached in a long-lived process is the process-environment problem in a different container. - **Never write to another plugin's purpose.** Same rule `service_connections` already has for rows. - **Tolerate rotation.** A key may change between two calls. Anything that decrypts must be prepared to be handed the retired key for data written before a rotation. --- ## Rotation The feature that makes the store worth building, and the reason versions exist. Today, changing `VAULT_STORE_KEY` is not an operation — it is data loss. Every column above becomes unreadable, and for `wallets.seed_envelope` that is unrecoverable: the owner passphrase does not help, because it opens the inner envelope and the outer one is gone. Unless the mnemonic was written down offline, the coins are gone with it. Rotation turns that into a supported action: 1. Mint a new key for the purpose, leaving the old one in the store as retired. 2. For every ciphertext column belonging to that purpose: decrypt with the retired key, re-encrypt with the new one. 3. Retire the old key only when every row has moved. Two properties it must have, both learned from the failure it replaces: - **Transactional.** A half-rotated table is worse than either end state, because nothing afterwards can tell which rows are which. - **Verify before writing.** Every row must decrypt with the retired key *before* anything is written. A key that is already wrong should fail loudly on row one rather than produce a second layer of unreadable data. `[open]` Whether rotation is a UI action, a CLI command, or both. It is a long operation on a large wallet table and it cannot be interrupted safely, which argues for something that reports progress. --- ## What this does not change - Secrets stay in Postgres. This moves the **keys**, not the data. - ~~`crypto.ts`'s interface stays~~ — **it did not.** Per-purpose keys mean the purpose has to be named at the call site, so it is `encryptSecret('headscale', plaintext)` now and all seven query modules were touched. That was the cost of the split, and it is worth stating plainly because this line originally promised the opposite. - The owner passphrase on wallet seeds is untouched and stays out of every store. Two independent secrets is the property that makes a stolen `.env` insufficient, and it survives this design. --- ## Open questions 1. Where the file lives, given it must not be swept up by a backup of `data/`. 2. Whether the store's own key stays in `.env` or moves to a file read on demand. 3. Whether rotation is UI, CLI, or both — and how it reports progress on a table that takes minutes. 4. SQLCipher, and whether whole-file encryption is ever worth a second native dependency. 5. What happens to a plugin's keys when it is uninstalled. The app store already decided that uninstalling never deletes data; the same answer probably applies, but "probably" is not a decision.