Security in plain words
No system is unbreakable, and we won’t pretend ours is. This page says what protects you and, just as plainly, what we can’t promise.
What protects you
- We keep a copy we can’t read. Your things are locked on your phone before they go anywhere. The key that opens them is made on your devices and never reaches us.
- We can’t say yes for you. Every yes is signed on your phone, over exactly what was asked. The laptop extension and the Claude Code guard check that signature themselves.
- Each thing has its own lock. One leaked password, or one lost device, stays one problem.
- No reset email that opens everything. Getting back in uses your other phones or your recovery kit, behind a wait that every device is told about.
- Your laptop and your AIs hold no keys. They ask your phone, every time a lock says so.
- Secrets travel sealed. A secret you send to Claude Code is sealed on your phone to the key that computer made when it connected. Our servers carry it and can’t open it.
The longer version, with the bad days one by one, is on How Vando keeps you safe.
What we cannot promise
Programs running as you can reach what you give them
When you give a secret to a program or an AI on your computer, anything else running as you on that computer can read it too: your own scripts, your AI, another AI, a bad package you installed. Your computer lets programs that run as the same person read each other’s settings and memory. Shorter is safer: give secrets for as short a time as the job needs.
A program can print a secret
If a command prints its settings (printenv, env, a debug log, an error report), the secret is in that output. If that output goes to your AI, the AI has seen it. Programs also write their settings into crash reports and logs, and your terminal may keep anything shown on screen. Vando writes nothing to disk; it can’t stop your programs or your computer from doing so.
Hiding a printed secret is best effort
coming vando run will hand secrets to one program and hide them in what your AI sees when that program prints them by accident. It can only hide a secret it recognises: not one the program changed first, not one written to a file or sent over the network. It helps; it is not protection. Today, the get_secret tool puts the secret straight into the AI’s conversation.
Taking access back is not taking the secret back
Disconnecting an AI or ending its access stops the next use, not the last one. A program that already has a secret keeps it. If that matters, change the secret where it came from.
And the rest
- Easy means easy. Someone who knows your phone’s PIN can open Easy things on it.
- Lose every key, lose Fort Knox. If all your phones, security keys and your recovery kit are gone, Fort Knox things stay shut, for you too.
- What has been shown can’t be un-shown. Vando keeps a record, but can’t take back what a person or an AI has seen.
- A bad app update would run on your devices. We won’t pretend that risk away.
- The recovery kit’s wait is checked by our server. Someone with your kit and control of our server could skip the 48 hours. That’s why the kit lives on paper, off your phone.
Last verified
Glossary
One definition per word, in the same words the app uses. Each term has its own link, so you can point someone straight at it.
What exists, what’s coming
Vando is built in three releases, named by who each is useful to. V1 Me, V2 Us, V3 Us + AI. We are in V1, in early access. This page says what works and what doesn’t, and we update it as things change.