# Karakeep

Your bookmarks, behind an Officer session. One self-hosted [Karakeep](https://karakeep.app) per Officer
install, pointed at by the owner, with every Officer user mapped onto an account of their own.

Officer stores no bookmarks. Karakeep owns those. What this plugin owns is the **credential** and the
**door**.

## The model

It is the Vault model:

| | |
| --- | --- |
| **One instance per install** | `karakeep_config`, one row pinned by a CHECK, set in the panel. Not `.env` — a plugin cannot ask the owner to edit a file and restart a process. |
| **A sidecar owns the upstream** | `officer-karakeep` reads the URL from Postgres with a short TTL and reverse-proxies. Nothing else knows where Karakeep is. |
| **Two doors** | An authenticated one for Officer's own UI, which injects the mapped user's API key so the device never holds one. And `/api/karakeep/kk`, unauthenticated, for the browser extension — which carries its own key. |
| **An account per user** | `karakeep_accounts`, provisioned per [`../USER_PROVISIONING.md`](../USER_PROVISIONING.md). |

## Why Karakeep, when this was first built against Linkwarden

Worth recording, because the plugin is otherwise the same shape.

Linkwarden authenticates its extension through **NextAuth**: host-scoped session cookies, CSRF checked
against the host, and absolute URLs baked from `NEXTAUTH_URL`. Proxying that means telling the upstream
the address the *client* uses, which is not the address the *sidecar* dials. Getting it wrong bounces the
extension out of the proxy mid-login. It cost a `NEXTAUTH_URL` change, a container recreate, a lost csrf
cookie, and it retired the upstream's own web login as the price of going through Officer.

Karakeep's extension holds an **API key** and sends it as a header. Nothing is host-pinned, so none of
that exists — the same key works at any address and the upstream stays reachable on its own.

Three concrete differences, all from source:

| | Linkwarden | Karakeep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Extension auth | username/password → session, plus NextAuth cookie routes | `apiKey` in settings, sent as a header |
| Host pinning | `NEXTAUTH_URL` must name the client-facing address | none |
| Custom headers | not supported | `customHeaders: z.record(string, string)` |
| Extension path | `${url}/api/v1/…` across the namespace | `${address}/api/trpc` |
| Provisioning | account creation yes; key minting needs a session | `users.create` + `apiKeys.exchange`, both public |

That last row is why nothing has to be pasted by hand: Officer creates the account, chooses the
password, and exchanges it for a key itself.

## A bare Officer origin

Not declared yet, and possible. The extension takes arbitrary `customHeaders`, so `protocolHeaders`
could route a bare `https://<officer>/` to this plugin the way Bitwarden's client headers route to Vault.
Left until the path form is proven, because it asks the owner to configure a header whose purpose is
invisible from where they are typing it.

## Two things carried over from the Linkwarden build

Both were bugs found by running it, and both are upstream-agnostic:

- **`content-encoding` must be stripped from a proxied response.** `fetch` decompresses the body but the
  headers still claim gzip, so the client tries to gunzip plain JSON. It hides well — a 401 body is too
  small to compress, so every unauthenticated probe passes and the first *real* request is the first to
  fail.
- **`Set-Cookie` must be copied with `append`, not `set`.** It is the one header that legitimately
  repeats. Karakeep should never need this; it is here because a proxy that is correct only for the
  traffic its author happened to test is a trap for whoever changes the upstream later.

## State

Written against the source, **not yet run**. The response shapes below come from
`packages/api/routes/`, and are the first thing to verify against a live instance:

- `GET /api/v1/lists` → `{ lists: [...] }`
- `GET /api/v1/bookmarks` → `{ bookmarks: [...], nextCursor }`
- `GET /api/v1/bookmarks/search?q=` → the same, paginated
- `GET /api/v1/lists/:listId/bookmarks` → the same

No provisioning yet — `api/accounts.ts` is the next piece.