Ward

Ward is a local-first AI secret firewall. It keeps your environment secrets encrypted at rest and controls when AI agents can access them — without changing how you work.

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How it works

Your .env file stays encrypted. When you or an AI agent needs to run a command that requires secrets, ward injects only the approved variables into that process — nothing else sees them.

There are two modes:

Human mode — you activate ward for your terminal session. Any command you run that needs secrets goes through ward automatically. No flags, no syntax changes.

Agent mode — AI agents (Claude, Codex, etc.) request scoped access through ward's approval flow. You see what they're asking for and approve or deny it. Ward generates the agent instructions automatically — you don't configure this manually.

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Install

cargo install aiward

Then add ~/.cargo/bin to your PATH if it isn't already:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

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Setup

Run this once inside your project directory:

cd your-project
ward setup

Ward will walk you through:

• Encrypting your .env
• Choosing where to store secrets (OS keychain or encrypted vault file)
• Creating a vault passphrase
• Creating a recovery PIN and recovery key
• Wiring up your shell

Your plaintext .env is replaced with a locked marker file — secrets live in the encrypted vault from this point on.

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Human mode

Human mode turns your current terminal into a ward-protected session. Once active, secret-bearing commands run through ward automatically — no extra flags required.

Start a session:

ward human

Ward spawns a guardian tied to your terminal. When you run pnpm dev, node, or any other command that needs secrets, ward intercepts it, injects the approved env vars, and lets the process run.

Shell integration (add to ~/.zshrc for automatic loading):

eval "$(ward shell-init)"

Check what's active:

ward modes status

Lock your session when done:

ward lock

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Session modes

Modes let you define permission envelopes — which secrets a command is allowed to touch and for how long.

Create a .ward.modes.json in your project:

[
  {
    "name": "dev",
    "level": "read",
    "allowedEnv": ["DATABASE_URI", "NEXT_PUBLIC_SERVER_URL"],
    "allowedCommands": ["pnpm dev*"],
    "maxTtl": "8h"
  },
  {
    "name": "database",
    "level": "write",
    "allowedEnv": ["DATABASE_URI", "PAYLOAD_SECRET"],
    "allowedCommands": ["node scripts/*.mjs", "pnpm payload migrate*"],
    "maxTtl": "2h"
  }
]

Push modes to your local vault (PIN required):

ward modes push

Unlock with a specific mode:

ward unlock --ttl 2h --mode dev

Now commands outside that mode's allowedEnv are blocked automatically — even if you run them manually.

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Vault operations

ward env list                        # see what's stored
ward env set KEY=value               # add or update a secret
ward env unset KEY                   # remove a secret
ward edit                            # open vault in $EDITOR
ward env export --output .env.plain  # write plaintext for manual use

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Audit logs

Every secret-bearing execution is logged locally, encrypted, and hash-chained:

ward logs view executions   # see what ran
ward logs view grants       # see what was approved
ward logs verify            # verify log integrity

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Doctor

ward doctor

Checks your setup: vault, broker, gitignore, grants, recovery key, and log integrity. Run this if something feels off.

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Agent mode

When you run ward setup, ward writes an AGENTS.md (or appends to CLAUDE.md) in your project directory. This file contains everything an AI agent needs to know to work with ward — how to request access, how to run commands, what scope to declare.

You don't need to configure agent mode manually. The file is auto-generated from your profiles and vault contents, and agents pick it up from their context window automatically.

The agent flow at a glance:

agent requests access  →  ward evaluates scope  →  you approve or deny
            ↓
  ward injects only the approved env vars into the command
            ↓
  execution is logged with the agent identity, command, and scope

Ward detects and blocks suspicious agent behavior before it reaches the approval prompt: full env dumps, secret echoing, network exfiltration patterns, clipboard access, and prompt injection attempts in declared action text.

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Security model

Ward is designed for a specific threat: AI agents accessing secrets through commands — accidentally, through prompt injection, or by requesting broader scope than a task needs.

Within that boundary, ward gives you hard guarantees:

• Vault filename is derived, not fixed. The vault has no predictable name on disk — it changes on each rotation and is only derivable with your passphrase.
• Session encryption. While an unlock session is active, the vault on disk is re-encrypted with a random ephemeral key held only in broker memory. Your passphrase-encrypted form does not exist on disk during an active session.
• Recovery key with PIN. A PIN-protected recovery key is stored locally. If a session is interrupted, ward can restore access without your vault passphrase. The recovery directory contains decoys — files that are indistinguishable from the real key without the correct PIN.
• Secrets are never written to disk in plaintext during normal operation.
• Every secret injection is logged with the requesting identity and scope.
• Approval grants are signed — editing them invalidates them.
• Audit logs are hash-chained — tampering is detectable.

Ward operates at the workflow layer, not the OS level. The protection is effective as long as secret-bearing commands run through ward — agents cannot access secrets outside their approved scope, and every injection is logged and attributable.

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Vault rotation and recovery

ward rotate                         # rotate vault to a new derived filename
ward recovery create                # create a PIN-protected recovery key
ward recovery export                # save a backup to a safe location
ward recovery import /path/to/file  # restore a recovery key from backup

Ward doctor will warn you if the recovery key is missing or if no backup has been exported.

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License

MIT OR Apache-2.0 — free to use, modify, and distribute.