sso-manager-node/docs/vault.md

layout, title, description

layout	title	description
default	Vault Secrets	OpenBao-backed personal, shared, and external-app secret storage built into the SSO Manager UI.

Vault Secrets Management

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The Vault Secrets feature integrates with OpenBao to provide a secure key-value store for your environment. It allows you to store sensitive information like passwords, API keys, and credentials, ensuring they are encrypted and access-controlled.

Usage

You can access the Vault UI from the application's top navigation bar.

Creating Secrets

1. Click on the New Secret button.
2. Enter a Secret Path. This acts as the name/identifier of your secret (e.g., db-credentials).
3. Enter the Secret Data in JSON format. For example:

   {
     "username": "admin",
     "password": "supersecretpassword123"
   }
   

4. Click Save Secret.

Reading and Editing Secrets

• To view a secret, click on its name in the Secrets List.
• To update an existing secret, select it and click the Edit button. You can then modify the JSON data and save your changes.

OpenBao Integration

The secrets are stored in a real, initialized-and-unsealed OpenBao backend (setup.sh handles init/unseal on first run) — not OpenBao's ephemeral dev mode, which auto-unseals with an in-memory store and loses everything on restart. The default KV (Key-Value) version 2 engine is mounted at secret/. The built-in UI proxies through /api/vault/secret/…, authenticated the same way as the rest of the app (session cookie or a personal API token) — the server resolves your OpenBao access itself and injects the right scoped token; you never see or handle a raw OpenBao token as a UI user.

Apps tab (admin)

The Apps tab mints a scoped OpenBao token for an external application so it can read its own configuration out of OpenBao — a downstream-app credential, not a per-user secret.

1. Enter an app name (e.g. my-service) and click Mint token.
2. A token is shown once — copy it into the external app now; it cannot be recovered later. The app uses it as the X-Vault-Token header against secret/apps/<name>/* (see the connection convention shown on the page).
3. The Minted apps list shows every token you've created (metadata only — the token itself is never stored). sso keeps each token alive by renewing it periodically, so a downstream app's credential stays valid as long as sso runs. If an app shows a renewal error, re-mint it here — that revokes the old token and issues a fresh one.

The token is scoped to secret/apps/<name>/* only (policy app-<name>), so a compromised token can't touch any other secret.

Shared tab

The Shared tab lets you share a secret with another user (or app) without copying the value around.

1. New — give the secret a name (slug) and its JSON data. The owner has full read/write on secret/shared/<uid>/<slug>.
2. Open a secret and use Grants to share it with a user or app; the grantee's OpenBao policy is edited immediately so the share takes effect with no token re-mint. Revoking a grant removes access at the ACL.
3. The data itself is read through the normal Vault proxy using each user's own session, so OpenBao enforces read access per-request.

API Access

To read your own secrets programmatically, call the /api/vault proxy with a personal API token — not a raw OpenBao token. The server authenticates the request, resolves your own scoped OpenBao access, and injects the real X-Vault-Token itself:

# Example: Read a secret via the API (KV-v2, so the path includes /data/)
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sso_<id>_<secret>" \
  https://<your-sso-host>/api/vault/secret/data/<your-secret-path>

An external app reading its own config uses the scoped token minted for it on the Apps tab instead of a personal token — see Apps tab (admin) above for how that token is minted and what it's confined to.

Using the OpenBao root token directly (bypassing the SSO entirely) is never the intended path for day-to-day secret access — it's an operator/maintenance credential (seeding, disaster recovery), kept in setup.env and never passed to a service container. See theta-env's Secrets doc for the full token/policy model.