DOCS/CORE CONCEPTS
SELF-HOSTED8 MIN READUPDATED 03 SEP 2026

CORE CONCEPTS / 03

Identity stays behind the line.

Vault sessions, encryption, reconstruction authorization, and deployment boundaries.
The Vault exists to separate useful placeholders from the raw values they represent. Its credentials are application secrets—not prompt context, not agent tools, and not receipt fields.
LOCAL VAULT

Session-bound reversible mappings

Protect and shard operations may create placeholders and return a session_id plus reconstruction_token to the trusted caller. The MCP adapter removes both fields before returning tool results to an agent.

  1. 01

    CREATE

    A protect or shard operation creates a bounded session when reversible mappings are needed.

  2. 02

    STORE

    Mappings are encrypted at rest and associated with the session, placeholder, and entity type.

  3. 03

    AUTHORIZE

    Reconstruction requires both session id and reconstruction token; callers may additionally allowlist placeholders.

  4. 04

    EXPIRE

    The default lifetime is 24 hours and the production ceiling is seven days in the current deployment.

CRYPTOGRAPHIC LAYER

Separate keys and authenticated context

CONTROLCURRENT IMPLEMENTATION
EncryptionAES-256-GCM with a random 96-bit nonce
DerivationHKDF-SHA-256 derives separate encryption, fingerprint, and receipt keys
Authenticated dataSession, placeholder, and entity type bind ciphertext to context
Key fileMode 0600 inside a read-only-root container and dedicated volume
DatabaseSQLite WAL, foreign keys enabled, synchronous FULL
RECONSTRUCTION

Restore only after output inspection

  • Never send reconstruction credentials to the upstream model, MCP host prompt, or autonomous agent.
  • Run the output guard before resolving placeholders.
  • Allowlist only the placeholders the current application view needs.
  • Treat expired or unauthorized sessions as a hard failure, not a reason to infer missing values.
  • Log receipt identifiers and decisions, never source values or decrypted mappings.
SHREDDAR DOCSYOUR DOC. YOUR DATA. YOUR CONTROL.

Public alpha documentation. Capability labels describe implementation state, not certification or guaranteed suitability.