fnox
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 4 of 20 secrets managers by recommenders
A command-line tool that gives one interface to secrets stored in OS keychains, age, and cloud or local vaults, keeping them out of environment files. Its main caveat is that the master password is awkward when set in an environment variable.
A command-line tool that gives one interface to secrets stored in OS keychains, age, and cloud or local vaults, keeping them out of environment files. Its main caveat is that the master password is awkward when set in an environment variable.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Unified access to many secret backends
“Ohh fnox looks really cool, with encryption being one possible provider but something like Vault being another.”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “Claude Code as a Daily Driver: Claude.md, Skills, Subagents, Plugins, and MCPs” “The problem fnox solves is great, unified access to secrets across dev, CI, prod with cloud backends.”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Keeper – embedded secret store for Go (help me break it)” “supports age as well as multiple cloud or local options behind one unified interface”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Secs-man, a secrets manager you can (not) rely on” - Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Lockenv – Simple encrypted secrets storage for Git”
Supports age, keychain and cloud stores
“especially because you can tell it to fetch some secrets from the user's laptop's OS keychain”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Where .env Went Wrong” “supports age as well as multiple cloud or local options behind one unified interface”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Secs-man, a secrets manager you can (not) rely on” “because of the flexibility and support for external storage”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Lockenv – Simple encrypted secrets storage for Git” Default tool for new projects
“pretty much default for any project I start nowadays”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “Claude Code as a Daily Driver: Claude.md, Skills, Subagents, Plugins, and MCPs” “I basically just use fnox everywhere”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “State of Homelab 2026” Well-made and reliable tool
“Awesome, both fnox and hk look very well-made.”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “Claude Code as a Daily Driver: Claude.md, Skills, Subagents, Plugins, and MCPs” “Pretty happy about these tools.”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Where .env Went Wrong”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as vibe coded or derivative
“started in October 2025, does not have any issues (at all) and is completely vibe coded”
Comment from 15 Mar 2026 in “Scrt: A CLI secret manager for developers, sysadmins and DevOps” “fnox is mostly a copy of secretspec”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Where .env Went Wrong” Relies on encryption provider setup
“This is only true if you use the encryption providers.”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Show HN: SecretEnv – Run any process with secrets from all your backends” “However you have a dependency of encryption/decryption.”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Show HN: SecretEnv – Run any process with secrets from all your backends”
Other secrets managers people recommend
The four most recommended other secrets managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OneCLI | 39 | 8 | 83% | 6 | — | Approved |
| SOPS | 28 | 5 | 85% | 10 | — | Approved |
| HashiCorp Vault | 26 | 10 | 72% | 10 | — | Approved |
| fnoxThis page | 20 | 4 | 83% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Agent Vault | 20 | 3 | 87% | 5 | — | Approved |
What people said
22 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Not sure if I like that. If my agent starts to snoop around he might use other caches transparently.”
“or just use fnox with caching”
“keeps secrets out of env with (so far for me) minimal inconvenience”
“having to set master password in an env var is a bit of snag for the workflow”
“It won't allow me to enter the master password for keepassdb.”
“That approach seems quite better than scanning a host file system for secrets.”
“Pretty happy about these tools.”
“there is fnox by the same author for secrets”
“fnox is mostly a copy of secretspec”
“especially because you can tell it to fetch some secrets from the user's laptop's OS keychain”
“supports age as well as multiple cloud or local options behind one unified interface”
“I've recently been enjoying”
“Ohh fnox looks really cool, with encryption being one possible provider but something like Vault being another.”
“Awesome, both fnox and hk look very well-made.”
“pretty much default for any project I start nowadays”
“This is only true if you use the encryption providers.”
“However you have a dependency of encryption/decryption.”
“I basically just use fnox everywhere”
“The problem fnox solves is great, unified access to secrets across dev, CI, prod with cloud backends.”
“established solutions like fnox don't”
“started in October 2025, does not have any issues (at all) and is completely vibe coded”
“because of the flexibility and support for external storage”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.