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Team Onboarding

Goal

Section titled “Goal”

As a new team member, get set up so you can decrypt the project’s shared secrets.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • dotsecenv installed (steps 1-2)
  • A GPG key (run dotsecenv identity create if you do not have one)

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

  1. Export your public key

    Terminal window
    gpg --armor --export you@example.com > my-key.asc

    Send my-key.asc to your team lead. This file contains only your public key and is safe to share.

  2. Wait for the team lead to share secrets with you

    The team lead will:

    • Import your public key: gpg --import my-key.asc
    • Add your identity to the vault: dotsecenv identity add YOUR_FINGERPRINT --all
    • Share secrets with you: dotsecenv secret share DATABASE_PASSWORD YOUR_FINGERPRINT
    • Push the updated vault to the repo

    They will tell you when this is done.

  3. Pull the updated vault

    Terminal window
    cd ~/project
    git pull

  4. Initialize dotsecenv and log in

    Terminal window
    dotsecenv init config
    dotsecenv login
    # Select your GPG key when prompted

  5. Verify you can decrypt secrets

    Terminal window
    dotsecenv secret get DATABASE_PASSWORD
    # Output: super-secret-password

    If this works, you have access.

  6. Enter the project directory

    If the project has a .secenv file, secrets load automatically:

    Terminal window
    cd ~/project
    # dotsecenv: found .secenv in /home/you/project
    # Load secrets? [y]es / [n]o / [a]lways: a
    # dotsecenv: loaded 3 secret(s) from .secenv: DATABASE_PASSWORD, API_KEY, JWT_SECRET
    

    echo $DATABASE_PASSWORD
    # Output: super-secret-password

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

“secret not found” or “access denied”

The team lead may not have shared all secrets yet. Run dotsecenv secret get (with no arguments) to list the secrets you can access.

“identity not found”

The team lead has not added your identity to the vault. Send them your fingerprint:

Terminal window
gpg --list-keys --keyid-format long you@example.com

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”