Governed ssh-agent

kovra can stand in as your ssh-agent: it speaks the ssh-agent protocol on a local socket and signs each authentication challenge in memory with a custodied keypair. The private key never leaves kovra and never touches ~/.ssh.

Run kovra as the agent

kovra ssh-agent runs in the foreground, prints the socket to export, and serves until you stop it. It refuses to start if $SSH_AUTH_SOCK is already set — it never hijacks another agent:

macOS

zsh

~ % kovra ssh-agent
kovra ssh-agent listening on ~/.vaults/agent.sock
Export it in the shells that should use kovra as their agent:

    export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=~/.vaults/agent.sock

Serving in the foreground — press Ctrl-C to stop.

Windows

Windows — coming soon. The same model on Windows Hello + Credential Manager.

Export the socket in another shell and SSH normally; each connection’s challenge is signed by kovra:

export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=~/.vaults/agent.sock
ssh deploy@server

A high/prod key asks you to bioProve every signature (a quick biometric check — Touch ID, Windows Hello) and is audited; low/medium keys sign silently. Which keys the agent will serve is governed by the scope in <vault-root>/agent.toml, the same scope model agents use.

Or load a key into your existing agent

If you’d rather keep your normal agent, kovra ssh-add loads a custodied key into the running ssh-agent, in memory only — never written to ~/.ssh. Loading a high/prod key asks you to bioProve it:

kovra ssh-add secret:dev/ssh/deploy

An honest limit

kovra governs the authentication event — the moment the key proves your identity — not the SSH session that opens afterward. Once a connection is authorized, what happens inside that session is between you and the remote host. kovra makes the key impossible to copy and the use of it attributable; it does not sit in the middle of your shell.