worthless 0.3.6

Split-key reverse proxy that makes leaked API keys worthless

Worthless

Make leaked API keys worthless.

When your .env leaks, the keys inside are placeholders. The real key never sits in your repo, your shell history, or your laptop's memory.

Quickstart

curl -sSL https://worthless.sh | sh        # fresh machine, no Python needed
# or, if you already have Python 3.10+:
pipx install worthless

Then cd into your project and run worthless. It detects keys in your .env, splits them, starts a local proxy. No code changes.

The Worker emits an X-Worthless-Script-Sha256 header so you can verify the bytes you ran match the bytes the Worker advertised before piping into sh. The check catches transit/cache tampering, not origin compromise — cosign-signed release manifests for that are tracked in WOR-303.

Full install options (Docker, MCP for Claude Code / Cursor / Windsurf, GitHub Actions, the verified-install flow, kill-switch runbook): docs.wless.io

Scope

Worthless scans for LLM provider API key prefixes only — currently openai (sk-, sk-proj-), anthropic (sk-ant-), google (AIza), and xai (xai-). For general secret detection (cloud tokens, GitHub PATs, AWS access keys, npm tokens, Cloudflare API tokens, etc.), use gitleaks or trufflehog as a companion tool — worthless will not flag those and is not trying to replace them.

How it works

1. worthless lock splits each API key into two shards
2. Shard A stays on your machine (encrypted). Shard B goes to the proxy database
3. Your .env is rewritten with shard A — format-preserving, but cryptographically useless alone
4. The proxy reconstructs the key only when the rules engine approves the request
5. Spend cap blown? The key never forms. The request never reaches the provider

Platforms

Platform	Status
macOS	Supported
Linux	Supported
Windows + WSL	Supported
Native Windows	Not supported — use WSL or Docker

Native-Windows support is tracked in WOR-237. See docs.wless.io for the full distro support matrix.

Versioning

PyPI version, signed git tag (vX.Y.Z), and the X-Worthless-Script-Tag header on worthless.sh are kept aligned — CI fails fast if pyproject.toml and the tag disagree. install.sh resolves the latest worthless from PyPI at install time; pin via WORTHLESS_VERSION=x.y.z curl -sSL https://worthless.sh | sh.

Documentation

Everything lives at docs.wless.io — install guides, the security model, wire protocol, recovery runbook, the verified-install flow, and the agent skill file (Claude Code / Cursor / Windsurf).

Development

git clone https://github.com/shacharm2/worthless && cd worthless
uv sync --extra dev --extra test
uv run pytest

Internal developer documentation lives in engineering/. Security invariants are in SECURITY.md.

Contributing

PRs welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING-security.md first.

License

AGPL-3.0