murk

Encrypted secrets manager for developers. One key unlocks everything.

murk stores encrypted secrets in a single .murk file that's safe to commit to git. It uses age encryption, works with direnv, and supports teams — all in one binary with no runtime dependencies.

murk is pre-1.0 and has not been independently audited. Use good judgment with production secrets.

Why

Most teams share .env files over Slack. That's bad. Tools like SOPS and Vault exist but they're complex, require cloud setup, or pull in runtimes you don't want.

murk is simple: one key in your .env, one encrypted file in your repo, done.

How murk compares

SOPS is the closest alternative. Both encrypt values in-place and support age. murk differs in having scoped (per-user) secrets, a single-file vault model, built-in team management (murk circle), and BIP39 key recovery. SOPS has broader KMS backend support and a larger ecosystem.

Vault solves a different problem — it's centralized infrastructure for secret storage, rotation, and dynamic credentials. If you need a secrets server, use Vault. If you want encrypted secrets in your repo, use murk.

dotenvx encrypts .env files but uses a single shared key for the whole team. There's no per-recipient encryption — if someone leaves, everyone needs a new key.

git-crypt encrypts entire files via git filters. Diffs are opaque, and revoking a team member is effectively impractical without re-encrypting git history.

Install

brew tap iicky/murk && brew install murk

Or via Cargo (requires Rust toolchain):

cargo install murk-cli

Or download a pre-built binary:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iicky/murk/main/install.sh | sh

Pre-built binaries are available for Linux (x86_64, aarch64, armv7), macOS (x86_64, Apple Silicon), and Windows on the releases page. Binary releases are attested and can be verified with gh attestation verify murk-* --owner iicky.

Quick start

# Initialize — generates your key and recovery phrase
murk init

# Add secrets (prompts for value, hidden input)
murk add DATABASE_URL
murk add OPENAI_KEY

# Use with direnv
echo 'eval $(murk export)' > .envrc

How it works

Your .murk file has a plaintext header (key names, descriptions — no values) and encrypted values. Anyone can see what secrets exist via murk info. Only recipients with a valid MURK_KEY can see values.

murk info           # Public schema — works without a key
murk ls             # List key names
murk get KEY        # Print a single value
murk export         # Shell export statements

Shared secrets vs scoped secrets

murk has two layers of encryption inside the .murk file:

Shared secrets (the murk) are encrypted to all recipients. When you run murk add KEY, every authorized team member can decrypt it. This is where production credentials, API keys, and other team-wide secrets live.

Scoped secrets (motes) are encrypted to only your key. When you run murk add KEY --scoped, the value is encrypted to only your key in the vault. During murk export, scoped values override shared ones — so you can use a local database URL while the rest of the team uses production.

# Shared — everyone sees this (prompts for value, hidden input)
murk add DATABASE_URL

# Scoped — only you see this, overrides the shared value during export
murk add DATABASE_URL --scoped

# Or pipe for scripting (use a command that doesn't leak to shell history)
pbpaste | murk add DATABASE_URL

Teams

# Alice sets up the vault
murk init
murk add DATABASE_URL

# Bob generates his own key
murk init

# Alice adds Bob as a recipient
murk circle authorize age1bob... --name bob@example.com

# Bob can now decrypt
murk export

# Bob overrides a value for local dev
murk add DATABASE_URL --scoped

Offboarding

When someone leaves, revoke their access and rotate the secrets:

murk circle revoke carol
murk add DATABASE_URL    # prompts for new value
murk add API_KEY
git commit -am "revoke carol, rotate secrets" && git push

CI/CD

Use murk-action to decrypt secrets in GitHub Actions workflows:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v4
  - uses: iicky/murk-action@v1
    with:
      murk-key: ${{ secrets.MURK_KEY }}
  - run: ./deploy.sh  # all vault secrets are now in the environment

Store your MURK_KEY as a GitHub Actions secret. All decrypted values are masked in logs.

Recovery

Your key is a BIP39 mnemonic. murk init prints 24 recovery words — write them down.

# Lost your key? Recover it (prompts for phrase, hidden input)
murk restore

Commands

Design

• age does the crypto — no custom cryptography
• Git is the audit trail — murk doesn't replicate what git does
• Header is public, values are private — key names are visible, values are not
• Explicit over magic — never silently overwrites or destroys data

The .murk file is safe to commit — key names are readable, values are individually encrypted:

{
  "version": "2.0",
  "recipients": ["age1abc..."],
  "schema": {
    "DATABASE_URL": { "description": "Production database" },
    "STRIPE_SECRET": { "description": "Stripe secret key" }
  },
  "secrets": {
    "DATABASE_URL": { "shared": "age-encryption.org/v1\n..." },
    "STRIPE_SECRET": { "shared": "age-encryption.org/v1\n..." }
  },
  "meta": "age-encryption.org/v1\n..."
}

See SPEC.md for the full specification.

Security notes

Shell history — murk add and murk restore prompt interactively with hidden input. Prefer these over passing secrets as arguments or via echo, which can leak to shell history. When piping from scripts, use commands that don't record to history (e.g. pbpaste | murk add KEY or reading from a file).

Key names are plaintext — the .murk header exposes key names (e.g. STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, DATABASE_URL) so that murk info works without a key and git diffs stay readable. Only values are encrypted. If your threat model requires hiding what services you use, this is a trade-off to be aware of.

Key stored in .env — your MURK_KEY lives in a .env file with chmod 600 permissions (owner read/write only). This file is gitignored. The key is equivalent to a password — anyone with access to the file or the MURK_KEY environment variable can decrypt shared secrets. This is the same trust model as SSH keys in ~/.ssh. If a machine is compromised, rotate your key and re-authorize with a new one.

Access control is advisory — any authorized recipient can decrypt all shared secrets. Per-key access metadata in the schema is cosmetic and not enforced cryptographically. If a recipient has MURK_KEY and is in the recipient list, they can read everything in the shared layer. Use scoped secrets (motes) for values that should stay private to one recipient.

See THREAT_MODEL.md for the full threat model.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0