platform/docs/secret-store.md

# 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 `offscale`, `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 **one** — `jwt` —
and every other purpose is created when its owner first asks.

(It bootstrapped `headscale` as well until 2026-08-16. That was a key for a plugin, minted under a name
the rename had already replaced, on machines where the plugin was not installed and nothing would ever
ask for it. `getKey` creates on demand, which is what makes core needing to know nothing about plugins
work at all.)

---

## 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/<pid>/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/<pid>/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`**.

**Superseded 2026-08-15.** The tailnet left the repository and is the `offscale` plugin; core is the five
above. The argument below was not refuted — it was overtaken. What settled it: the perimeter is the
tailnet EXISTING, which is a machine-setup concern, and that is not the same as the platform shipping the
screen that administers it. `machine-setup.sh` still walks you onto a tailnet on a core install; only the
admin UI became optional. Kept because the reasoning is what a future "should X be core?" argument needs.

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.