Why not dotenv

Why not .env

.env was designed for a threat model whose adversary was git. One line in .gitignore and you were done.

That model is obsolete. The adversary is now the agent sitting in your project. Anything the agent can read is a LEAK — Locally Exposed Agent Key:

• .env / .env.local / .env.production
• credentials JSON, .npmrc, .pypirc
• SSH private keys left in the tree
• shell history and MCP configs (see ka scan --deep)

Pasting a key into chat is worse: it lives in the conversation (and often in JSONL transcripts) forever.

key-amnesia stores values in an encrypted vault. Agents trigger ka run --secret NAME --as NAME=ENVVAR -- <command>; injection happens in the child environment; scrubbed output comes back. --as must be NAME=ENVVAR (or omit --as and inject under the secret name). There is no "get secret" API for the agent.

Find plaintext with:

ka scan
ka scan --no-import   # report only

The headline looks like: N LEAK found — your agent can read N secrets in this project. Names, paths, and counts only — never values. After the report you can store selected dotenv findings into a project vault (TTY import path), or migrate a known file with ka import.