README.md

Capsulen

Capsulen is a compact journaling application inspired by microblogs. It encrypts all your data in the browser before persisting it on the server, ensuring that only the individual with the private key can access the contents of the journal.

How it works?

The underlying concept is to eliminate any possibility of linking an account to a specific identity, and passwords should not be transmitted over the wire. Here's how we handle creating a user and a user token:

Creating a user

sequenceDiagram
    Browser->>Server: sends username
    Server->>Database: creates a pending user
    Server->>Browser: sends a "challenge"
    Browser->>Server: encrypts the challenge
    Server->>Database: persists the encrypted challenge

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Creating a user token

sequenceDiagram
    Browser->>Server: sends username
    Server->>Database: fetches the user
    Server->>Browser: sends the encrypted "challenge"
    Browser->>Server: decrypts the challenge
    note over Server: verifies the decrypted challenge
    Server->>Browser: sends a user token

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• User tokens are only stored in memory (there are no persistent sessions)
• To create a user, you must obtain an invite code from an existing user

Running locally

Ensure you have a PostgreSQL database created and running. Next, copy the .env.example as .env, replacing the values (paseto key and Sentry ones are not required). Then run the following commands:

npm install
npm run db:refresh

To create an initial account, generate an invite code:

npm run gen:invite

You don't need to inform a PASETO_KEY. In that case, every time the app restarts, it will generate a new key. If you want to have a single key for all restarts, generate one and paste it into your .env with the following command:

npm run gen:pasetoKey

To run the application in development mode, execute:

npm run dev

Running in production

Build the assets and start the server:

npm run build
npm run start