🔐 mykeep · Vault

Your secrets, sealed on the drive — so an agent can act as you without ever seeing your keys.

mykeep.ai · Secured · Private · Portable

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Vault is the "acts as you" component of mykeep. It holds your API keys and secrets, encrypted on the drive, so your agent can take authenticated actions on your behalf — call services, deploy, send mail — without your credentials ever touching the cloud or the model provider.

The core insight: a broker, not a key dispenser

If an agent can read a raw key, that key lands in the transcript — which goes to the model provider — which defeats the entire point. So Vault never hands the agent a secret. The agent works by reference:

POST /v1/secrets/{credential}/request
  { "method": "POST", "url": "https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges", "body": { ... } }

→ Vault attaches the auth header server-side, forwards the request, and returns the
  response. The agent gets the result — never the credential.

The secret stays sealed on the drive. Vault is, in effect, an authenticated-egress proxy.

Bounded and observable — not "trust the agent"

At-rest encryption isn't runtime safety: once unlocked, an agent (or a prompt-injected one) can act with your authority. Vault's honest promise isn't "your keys are safe" — it's that the blast radius is bounded and observable. That falls out of the proxy model:

• Per-credential host allowlist. The stripe credential only ever attaches to api.stripe.com. A hijacked agent can't aim the proxy at evil.com to exfiltrate the key.
• Approval tiers. Read-only calls auto-allow; writes and destructive calls require explicit confirmation; some credentials are deny-by-default.
• Encrypted audit log. Every action taken as you — credential, destination, method, result, time — recorded on the drive and reviewable.
• OAuth brokering (later). Hold refresh tokens sealed and run the refresh dance locally, so "act as you" extends to services like mail and calendar.

How an agent uses it

The same shape as the rest of mykeep: a loopback REST API + a pasted guide — the zero-install floor that works with any agent that can make an HTTP call. No client config, no plugin. Vault is REST-native because it is an HTTP proxy.

Quick start

make build    # -> bin/vault   (pure Go, CGO_ENABLED=0)

./bin/vault         # GUI: set a password, add/manage credentials, approve writes, read the audit
./bin/vault serve   # headless: unlock via MYKEEP_VAULT_PASSPHRASE / stdin, serve the API

• GUI (default). Authenticates by the unlock password → a loopback session cookie, so a co-resident agent (no password) can't reach the control plane. It shows the use token to paste into your agent.
• serve. Prints both tokens. --lan exposes only the use plane on the network; --idle sets the auto-lock minutes.

Make target	What it does
make test	46 tests — crypto, allowlist/SSRF, auth, reflect-guard, audit chain, plane separation, approvals
make guard	prove zero CGo in the dependency graph
make cross	all six win/mac/linux × amd64/arm64 targets
go test -race ./...	race detector (needs CGO_ENABLED=1)

Layout

internal/secret   argon2id KEK→DEK + AES-256-GCM whole-file seal
internal/vault    store (encrypted JSON), auth templates, allowlist + resolve-then-pin egress,
                  reflect-guard, hash-chained audit, rate limit, idle auto-lock
internal/server   the two planes, loopback guard + LAN toggle, token/session auth, pending-approval
internal/gui      the local web app: unlock, add/manage credentials, approvals, audit
cmd/vault         the runnable broker (gui | serve)

Architecture in DESIGN.md, threat model in SECURITY.md.

Design principles

• The key never leaves the vault — agents and tools act by reference; no endpoint returns a plaintext secret into the model's context.
• Scoped, gated, audited — allowlist + approval + log, by default.
• Portable & private — pure Go, zero CGo, one binary; sealed at rest; no cloud.
• The agent reasons, mykeep provides — Vault brokers and records; it does no LLM reasoning.

Where it fits

Vault is one of four mykeep components — all on one drive, under one password:

	Component	Your agent can…
🧠	Capsule	know you — encrypted, portable memory
🔐	Vault (this repo)	act as you — a secrets broker that acts by reference
🔮	Showstone	see the web — a contained browser it drives over REST
🧰	Foundry	do more — sandboxed tools + the backend they run on

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_{A component of mykeep · Secured · Private · Portable · © 2026 Domu Inc}