Coldkey – Post-quantum age key generation and paper backup tool

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TLDR

  • CLI tool generating ML-KEM-768 + X25519 hybrid age keys with printable QR-code HTML backups for offline disaster recovery.

Key Takeaways

  • Uses ML-KEM-768 + X25519 hybrid to produce post-quantum-safe age-compatible private keys installable via Homebrew or Go.
  • Paper backup is a single printable HTML page with QR codes, SHA-256 checksum, and step-by-step sops recovery instructions.
  • Age PQ keys store only the 32-byte seed, keeping full keys.txt around 2,089 bytes and fitting a single version-40 QR code.
  • Docker mode enforces --network none, --read-only, --cap-drop ALL, distroless nonroot image, and RAM-backed tmpfs for /tmp.
  • Known limit: Go GC may copy key strings in heap before zeroing; mlockall prevents swap exposure but not in-RAM persistence.

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