Core concepts

Hikyo is designed around a small set of rules that stay visible in the API, browser UI, CLI, audit trail, and storage model.

The short version

Scope every value to one organisation, project, and environment.
Declare a key before writing its value.
Treat absent as real state, not a missing default.
Reveal secret plaintext only through an explicit disclosure action.
Grant narrow capabilities to a principal at a named scope.

A key declaration defines what a value means. Each environment then records its own state as either set or absent. Development cannot silently supply a default to production, and an empty cell is never ambiguous.

Secrets are a separate disclosure path

Ordinary reads return classification and presence, not secret plaintext. Revealing or copying a secret is a deliberate, reauthenticated ceremony with a short remask window and its own audit event. Replacing a secret does not require reading its current value.

Validation happens at write time

Declarations distinguish configuration from secrets and attach validation and presence rules. A write is accepted only when the new value and the resulting environment state are both valid. Required values cannot be cleared where their presence rule applies.

Authorization has one chokepoint

Human sessions, machine identities, and local break-glass operations enter by different routes, but resource access is evaluated against the same explicit capability and scope model. Unauthorized resources remain indistinguishable from resources that do not exist.

Audit records describe the decision

Security-sensitive events record the actor, object, outcome, and decision context without recording secret material. Local-host recovery actions remain distinguishable from ordinary network-authorized changes.

Go deeper

Architecture explains the process and trust boundaries.
Hierarchy explains organisations, projects, and environments.
Values and secrets explains declarations and disclosure.
Identity and access explains principals and capabilities.