Secure Credentials Kit

A secure, encrypted credentials system for Django and FastAPI, inspired by Rails credentials.

Features

• Environment-specific encrypted credentials
• Framework-neutral CLI for generating and editing encrypted credentials
• Master keys for editing credentials and read-only keys for application runtime access
• Signed encrypted credential files backed by an asymmetric signing/verification key pair
• Django management commands
• FastAPI helpers for loading credentials into application state

Installation

The PyPI distribution, Python package, and CLI are all named for Secure Credentials Kit:

• Distribution: secure-credentials-kit
• Python package: secure_credentials_kit
• CLI: secure-credentials-kit

Supported versions:

• Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14
• Django 5.2 LTS and Django 6.0

For Django:

pip install "secure-credentials-kit[django]"

For FastAPI:

pip install "secure-credentials-kit[fastapi]"

Local Development

This project uses pyproject.toml for package metadata and uv for local dependency management.

Install uv, then create a development environment:

uv sync

Install framework extras when you need to test integrations:

uv sync --extra django
uv sync --extra fastapi

Run tests:

uv run python -m unittest discover -v

Build the package:

uv run python -m build

Credentials Files

Add secret keys to .gitignore:

echo "secrets/*.key" >> .gitignore

Generate a new key pair:

secure-credentials-kit generate-key <environment>

This creates two role-specific keys:

• secrets/<environment>.master.key can decrypt, edit, encrypt, and sign credentials with the private signing key.
• secrets/<environment>.readonly.key can decrypt and verify credentials with the public verification key, but cannot produce accepted credential updates.

Key files are stored as one-line base64url payloads. The decoded payload contains the key material and format version; the package detects the key role automatically from the key material, so there is no visible master: or readonly: prefix in the file contents.

You can regenerate a read-only key from an existing master key:

secure-credentials-kit generate-key <environment> --role readonly

Edit encrypted credentials:

secure-credentials-kit edit <environment>

Editing requires secrets/<environment>.master.key. Applications should normally run with only secrets/<environment>.readonly.key.

The editor opens the decrypted YAML. The YAML root must be a mapping:

SOME_ENV_VAR: secret-value
database:
  url: postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/app
api:
  token: token-value

Credentials are stored in secrets/<environment>.yml.enc, and keys are stored in secrets/<environment>.master.key and secrets/<environment>.readonly.key. The encrypted file is generated by the tool and should not be edited by hand. It contains a signed encrypted payload similar to:

{
  "version": 2,
  "payload": "gAAAAAB...",
  "signature": "..."
}

Django Usage

Add secure_credentials_kit to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'secure_credentials_kit',
    ...
]

You can also use Django management commands:

python manage.py credentials_generate_key <environment>

python manage.py credentials_generate_key <environment> --role readonly

python manage.py credentials_edit <environment>

To load the credentials in your Django app:

from secure_credentials_kit.secrets_loader import decrypt_credentials
credentials = decrypt_credentials("environment")

Where credentials is an instance of class CredentialsContainer containing the decrypted credentials.

FastAPI Usage

Load credentials into FastAPI application state:

from fastapi import Depends, FastAPI
from secure_credentials_kit.fastapi import (
    credentials_dependency,
    setup_secure_credentials_kit,
)

app = FastAPI()
setup_secure_credentials_kit(app, "production")


@app.get("/settings")
def settings(credentials=Depends(credentials_dependency())):
    return {"api_host": credentials.get("api_host")}

If no environment is passed to setup_secure_credentials_kit, the helper checks SECURE_CREDENTIALS_KIT_ENV, FASTAPI_ENV, ENV, then falls back to development.

Accessing Credentials

To access a credential:

credentials.get('key')

or

credentials.dig('key', 'subkey')

for complex nested credentials.

To access and cast a credential:

credentials.get_as_type('port', int)

or

credentials.dig_as_type(int, 'database', 'port')