hal-vault

A simple, modern and secure secret store CLI and Go library — SSH-key encryption, tag search, agent-safe masked output. Built on age, built for AI agents.

• One encrypted file. The whole vault is a single age-encrypted blob with an automatic previous-generation backup. Saves are atomic and durable; concurrent writes serialize through a lock.
• SSH keys are the keys. A dedicated ~/.ssh/hal-vault_ed25519 is generated on first init — or bring your own ed25519/RSA key.
• Masked by default. Output shows sk-p…7890 (24 chars), never the value. Raw secrets reach stdout only through --reveal.
• Never on argv. Values come from stdin or a hidden prompt — not from shell history, not from ps.
• Minimal. age, x/crypto, x/term, x/sys, and the standard library. No frameworks, no daemon, no cloud.

Install

macOS / Linux (recommended):

brew install ofoxai/tap/hal-vault

Pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows — with build provenance attestations — are on the releases page:

curl -LO https://github.com/ofoxai/hal-vault/releases/download/v0.0.3/hal-vault-v0.0.3-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
tar -xzf hal-vault-v0.0.3-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 hal-vault/hal-vault /usr/local/bin/hal-vault

(Binaries downloaded through a browser on macOS may need xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <file> first.)

From source: go install github.com/ofoxai/hal-vault/cmd/hal-vault@latest

Usage

$ hal-vault init
generated SSH key pair: /home/you/.ssh/hal-vault_ed25519
initialized vault in /home/you/.hal-vault
recipient: /home/you/.ssh/hal-vault_ed25519.pub
identity:  /home/you/.ssh/hal-vault_ed25519
hal-vault is fully operational.

init -r/-i binds an existing SSH key pair instead; -d picks the vault directory (every command accepts -d; HAL_VAULT_DIR works too).

Add a secret — the value is read from stdin or a hidden double prompt, never from the command line:

$ hal-vault add openai -t api_key --tags llm,prod < openai.key
added 7q3k2m openai: sk-p…7890 (24 chars)

Find and inspect — always masked:

$ hal-vault search llm
ID      TYPE     LABEL   TAGS      MASKED                UPDATED
7q3k2m  api_key  openai  llm,prod  sk-p…7890 (24 chars)  2026-06-11 10:32

Use a secret — --reveal prints the raw value plus one newline, made for command substitution:

$ OPENAI_API_KEY="$(hal-vault get openai --reveal)" ./deploy.sh

Rotate and remove:

$ hal-vault update openai --value < rotated.key
$ hal-vault rm openai

hal-vault help covers the rest: entry types, --json output, exit codes.

Built for agents

--reveal is the single explicit boundary: without it, no output mode — table, detail view, JSON, or error — ever contains a raw value. An agent can hold the vault without ever holding the secrets. The companion skill teaches agents the discipline:

npx skills add ofoxai/hal-vault-skill

See ofoxai/hal-vault-skill.

Library

import "github.com/ofoxai/hal-vault/vault"

s, _ := vault.Open(vault.DefaultDir())
db, _ := s.Load()
for _, e := range db.Search("prod", "", "") {
    fmt.Println(e.ID, e.Label, e.Masked())
}

The vault package never prints, and its errors never contain secret values.

Security

An attacker who obtains the vault file but not your SSH private key learns nothing beyond its size — that guarantee is age's. What hal-vault does and does not protect against is in SECURITY.md.

Why "hal-vault"?

Named for HAL 9000 — a computer that took keeping secrets a little too seriously. hal-vault has the same dedication to confidentiality, with one improvement: the pod bay doors (--reveal) open whenever you ask.

License

BSD-3-Clause. Copyright (c) 2026 OFOX AI.