Desktop SSH agent

Proposal, not an available feature. No network permission or new data collection is enabled. These RFCs are locally prepared; remote review/merge awaits the owner repository.

Current architecture

The Node CLI currently manages encrypted files; it does not expose an SSH agent socket or support SSH key entries.

Design under review

Use a reviewed SSH agent protocol implementation on an owner-only Unix socket or Windows named pipe. Keep signing in the unlocked desktop process, require explicit first-use approval and a per-key policy, reject unsupported agent forwarding by default, bound packet sizes and never export private keys through the agent API. Parse encrypted SSH keys locally and preserve protected key fields in KDBX.

Milestones

1. M1: protocol/library/license review and negative packet corpus
2. M2: loopback/owner-only desktop signing prototype with OpenSSH client interoperability
3. M3: policy UX, lock/revocation behavior, platform permissions and signed builds

Required acceptance tests

• Locked vault and denied confirmation cannot sign
• Oversized packets and unknown algorithms fail without crashing
• Other OS users cannot open the agent endpoint

Limits

Process identity alone is not universally strong caller authentication. A compromised logged-in OS user remains inside the threat boundary.

Any implementation must preserve local unlock/export, add KDBX/KeePassXC regressions for crypto/format changes and update privacy disclosures before new data flows begin.

← All 41 workstreams