helvetisafe-vault-k8s 0.1.4

Kubernetes integration for Helvetisafe secret management — sidecar agent, Secret sync, and init-container injection

helvetisafe-vault-k8s

Python package for consuming Helvetisafe secrets in any environment — locally, in CI, or inside a Kubernetes workload. Built on the Helvetisafe Python client and its zero-knowledge encryption model.

Three CLI modes are available:

Mode	Command	Description
Serve	helvetisafe-vault-k8s serve	HTTP agent that exposes decrypted secrets on 127.0.0.1
Inject	helvetisafe-vault-k8s inject	Write secrets to a single env file (--output) or one file per secret (--output-dir)
Sync	helvetisafe-vault-k8s sync	Sync secrets into a Kubernetes Secret object

Kubernetes deployment manifests and examples are maintained separately in the aegis repository under clients/kubernetes/.

Status

✅ v0.1.0 — available

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Installation

pip install helvetisafe-vault-k8s

The sync mode requires the kubernetes extra:

pip install "helvetisafe-vault-k8s[kubernetes]"

Requirements: Python 3.8+ · helvetisafe-client >= 0.1.0 (auto-installed) · kubernetes >= 28.0.0 (optional, sync only)

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Configuration

All settings are read from environment variables.

Variable	Required	Default	Description
HELVETISAFE_BASE_URL	✅	—	Base URL of the Helvetisafe instance, e.g. https://vault.helvetisafe.ch
HELVETISAFE_CLIENT_ID	✅	—	OAuth 2.0 client ID
HELVETISAFE_CLIENT_SECRET	✅	—	OAuth 2.0 client secret
HELVETISAFE_PASSWORD	one of three	—	Service account password
HELVETISAFE_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH	one of three	—	Path to a PEM private key file
HELVETISAFE_PRIVATE_KEY_PEM	one of three	—	PEM private key as a string
HELVETISAFE_AGENT_PORT		8080	Port the serve agent listens on
HELVETISAFE_AGENT_HOST		127.0.0.1	Host the serve agent binds to
HELVETISAFE_K8S_NAMESPACE		default	Kubernetes namespace (sync mode)
HELVETISAFE_K8S_SECRET_NAME		—	Kubernetes Secret name (sync mode)
HELVETISAFE_SECRET_KEYS		—	Comma-separated keys to fetch; empty means all

Exactly one of HELVETISAFE_PASSWORD, HELVETISAFE_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH, or HELVETISAFE_PRIVATE_KEY_PEM must be set.

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Modes

Serve

Starts a lightweight HTTP server bound to 127.0.0.1 (loopback only). Any process on the same host can fetch decrypted secrets without implementing any cryptographic logic.

helvetisafe-vault-k8s serve [--port PORT] [--host HOST]

Method	Path	Description
GET	/health	Returns {"status": "ok"}
GET	/secrets	Lists all secret key names
GET	/secret/{key}	Returns the decrypted key/value pairs as a flat JSON object

The response for GET /secret/{key} is always a flat JSON object. When the secret stores multiple key/value pairs (e.g. all database credentials under one secret path), every pair is returned at the top level. For a single plain-string secret the response is {"<key>": "<value>"}. The Helvetisafe secret path is never included in the response body.

import requests

# Single-value secret → {"database_password": "s3cr3t"}
secret = requests.get("http://localhost:8080/secret/database_password").json()
value = secret["database_password"]

# Multi-value secret → {"DB_HOST": "localhost", "DB_PASS": "s3cr3t"}
db = requests.get("http://localhost:8080/secret/db_credentials").json()
host = db["DB_HOST"]

Inject

Fetches secrets once and materialises them for consumption by the main application. Designed for the init-container pattern: the init-container runs this command to populate a shared emptyDir volume before the main application starts.

Exactly one output mode must be specified.

Option A — single env file (--output)

Writes all secrets to a single file, one KEY=value pair per line.

helvetisafe-vault-k8s inject --output /path/to/secrets.env

Output format (no quoting):

KEY_NAME=plaintext-value
ANOTHER_KEY=another-value

Literal newline characters inside values are replaced with the two-character sequence \n to keep each entry on a single line. No other escaping is applied.

Option B — one file per secret (--output-dir)

Writes one file per secret into a directory. The file name is the secret key and the file content is the raw plaintext value (no escaping). The directory is created if it does not exist.

helvetisafe-vault-k8s inject --output-dir /secrets/

Resulting layout:

/secrets/
├── KEY_NAME        # contains: plaintext-value
└── ANOTHER_KEY     # contains: another-value

This format is convenient for workloads that read individual secret files from a mounted volume (e.g. via envFrom with a secretKeyRef, or by reading /secrets/<KEY> directly).

Note: Unlike sync, inject never creates or updates a Kubernetes Secret, even if HELVETISAFE_K8S_SECRET_NAME is set.

Sync

Fetches secrets and creates or updates a Kubernetes Secret object.

helvetisafe-vault-k8s sync [--output /path/to/secrets.env]

Requires the kubernetes extra and a service account with get, create, and update permissions on secrets in the target namespace.

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Architecture

Client process
├── Your application
│       └─► GET http://127.0.0.1:8080/secret/db_password   (serve mode)
│
└── helvetisafe-vault-k8s
        ├─► POST https://vault.helvetisafe.ch/oauth/token
        │       ← access_token
        ├─► GET  /api/v1/credentials/org-key
        │       ← encrypted Org Key (RSA-OAEP)
        │   RSA decrypt → Org Key  (in memory only)
        └─► GET  /api/v1/secrets/db_password
                ← AES-256-GCM ciphertext
            AES decrypt → plaintext

Plaintext values never leave the process memory. The Helvetisafe server only ever stores and transmits ciphertext.

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Project Structure

helvetisafe-vault-k8s/
├── pyproject.toml
├── src/
│   └── helvetisafe_k8s/
│       ├── agent.py     # Serve mode HTTP server
│       ├── cli.py       # CLI entry point
│       ├── config.py    # Environment-variable config loader
│       └── sync.py      # Inject / sync utilities
└── tests/
    ├── test_agent.py
    ├── test_config.py
    └── test_sync.py

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Running Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue or pull request in this repository.

License

MIT