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adlee-was-taken 5e7023fcc1 docs: add scope headers + Next: footers to all tour docs

Each of the eight tour docs (README, DESIGN, docs/CRYPTO,
docs/FORMATS, docs/SECURITY, crates/relicario-core/ARCHITECTURE,
crates/relicario-cli/ARCHITECTURE, extension/ARCHITECTURE) now
declares its scope in a blockquote under its H1 and ends with a
single-line "Next:" pointer to the next doc in the canonical
reading order: README → DESIGN → CRYPTO → FORMATS → SECURITY →
core → cli → extension.

Also trimmed README's mid-section "Architecture" stub to a one-
paragraph pointer at DESIGN.md (was duplicating cross-codebase
content and referencing a non-existent docs/architecture/ tree).

Renamed docs/CRYPTO.md's H1 from "Relicario — Architecture" to
"Relicario — Crypto Pipeline" to match the file's renamed scope.

Spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-30-doc-structure-redesign-design.md

2026-05-30 15:36:46 -04:00

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Relicario Security Model

Audience: auditors and curious users. This doc owns the threat model, attacker-scenarios table, device-authentication model, env-var trust surface, and known limitations. Does NOT own: crypto primitive details (see CRYPTO.md), wire formats (see FORMATS.md), or implementation (see ../crates/relicario-core/ARCHITECTURE.md and ../crates/relicario-cli/ARCHITECTURE.md).

Cryptographic Protection

Relicario uses two-factor vault decryption:

Passphrase — user-memorized, zxcvbn score ≥3 required
Reference image — JPEG carrying 256-bit secret via DCT steganography

Key derivation: Argon2id (64 MiB memory, 3 iterations, 4 parallelism) Encryption: XChaCha20-Poly1305 (192-bit nonce, 256-bit key)

Manifest Integrity

The manifest (manifest.enc) is encrypted with AEAD, which provides:

Confidentiality: Contents unreadable without master key
Integrity: Any modification detected and rejected on decrypt
Authenticity: Only master key holders can create valid ciphertexts

What AEAD Does NOT Protect

Item deletion: An attacker with write access can delete .enc files or git-revert commits. The manifest decrypts successfully but won't contain the deleted items.
Rollback attacks: An attacker can replace manifest.enc with an older valid version. AEAD accepts any ciphertext created with the key.

Mitigation

Item deletion and rollback are detectable via git history:

git log --oneline items/

For environments where git history could be rewritten (force-push):

Enable device authentication (commit signing + pre-receive hook)
Use a git server that rejects non-fast-forward pushes
Regular backups with relicario backup export

Device Authentication

When enabled, device authentication provides:

Commit authorship: All commits signed by registered device keys
Push access control: Deploy keys managed via Gitea API
Instant revocation: One command cuts off both signing and push

Enforcement requires deploying the relicario-server pre-receive hook on the vault remote. The crate provides two subcommands:

relicario-server generate-hook — emits the hook script to install at <repo>/hooks/pre-receive
relicario-server verify-commit <sha> — checks one commit's signature against .relicario/devices.json and .relicario/revoked.json as of that commit; the hook calls this for every pushed ref

Without the server hook, signed commits provide authorship metadata only — any process with push access can land an unsigned commit, since verification is otherwise advisory.

See docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-02-device-authentication-design.md.

Access Control

Without device authentication, access control is transport-layer only:

CLI: SSH key authentication to git remote
Extension: Git credentials in browser storage

Device registration is optional but recommended for shared vaults.

Configuration env vars

Relicario reads the following environment variables. Each is a trust boundary: an attacker who can set them in the user's environment can influence Relicario's behavior. They are listed here for security reviewers to audit the surface in one place.

User-facing (active in all builds)

Variable	Purpose	Trust
`RELICARIO_IMAGE`	Override the reference-image JPEG path used during vault unlock.	Trusted: filesystem path under the user's control. Read-only; its bytes feed `imgsecret::extract_secret`.
`RELICARIO_GITEA_URL`	Gitea API base URL for `relicario device add`. Equivalent to `--gitea-url`.	Trusted: HTTPS URL. Used only in the device-add code path.
`RELICARIO_GITEA_TOKEN`	Gitea personal-access token. Equivalent to `--gitea-token`.	Secret: anyone who can read this env var can manage the user's deploy keys via the Gitea API. The CLI never logs it.
`RELICARIO_GITEA_OWNER`	Gitea repository owner (e.g. `alee`). Equivalent to `--owner`.	Trusted: opaque string.
`RELICARIO_GITEA_REPO`	Gitea repository name (e.g. `vault`). Equivalent to `--repo`.	Trusted: opaque string.

Debug-only (compiled out of `cargo build --release`)

The following variables are gated behind cfg(debug_assertions) and are no-ops in release builds. The env-var lookup is removed by the optimiser from any binary built without debug assertions (i.e. the standard --release profile).

Variable	Purpose
`RELICARIO_NO_GROUPS_CACHE`	Suppress the plaintext `groups.cache` write. Developer debugging tool for the cache logic.
`RELICARIO_TEST_PASSPHRASE`	Bypass the `rpassword` prompt during integration tests.
`RELICARIO_TEST_ITEM_SECRET`	Bypass the `rpassword` prompt for item-secret fields during integration tests.
`RELICARIO_TEST_BACKUP_PASSPHRASE`	Bypass the `rpassword` prompt for backup export/restore passphrases during integration tests.

Next: ../crates/relicario-core/ARCHITECTURE.md — implementation, starting with the platform-agnostic core.

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