SOPS Safe

Edit encrypted files like ordinary files—without a plaintext working copy.

SOPS Safe detects encrypted local text files through SOPS, opens them in a native VS Code editor, and re-encrypts them when you save. You keep syntax highlighting, formatting, validation, and the familiar Ctrl+S workflow; the file in your workspace remains ciphertext.

That distinction matters in an agentic editor. Internet-backed coding agents can assemble model context from files in your workspace; a decrypted sibling file can become part of a prompt sent to a remote model provider just as accidentally as it can become a Git commit. SOPS Safe never creates that file, so filesystem-based agents and indexers continue to find ciphertext.

Why SOPS Safe?

Most SOPS extensions optimize the editing workflow. SOPS Safe also treats plaintext lifetime and save failure as product features.

• No plaintext workspace copy for agents to ingest. The decrypted editor is backed by an in-memory virtual document rather than a sibling file beside your secret.
• No extension-managed plaintext on persistent storage. When SOPS needs a file during save, it exists only in a verified private tmpfs beneath $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, with owner-only permissions and symlink checks.
• Encrypted, transactional saves. SOPS Safe builds a candidate beside the source, verifies that it is encrypted, checks twice that the source has not changed, syncs it, and atomically replaces the original.
• An honest VS Code threat model. Native text documents can be observed by VS Code backup storage and other extensions. SOPS Safe checks both boundaries and warns instead of claiming that a virtual document alone makes plaintext invisible.
• SOPS stays in charge. Detection, decryption, recipients, creation rules, and file-format semantics come from your installed SOPS binary. There is no second parser or key configuration to drift from SOPS itself.

Designed for coding-agent safety

SOPS Safe reduces accidental file-based disclosure to coding agents, search indexes, and other tools that crawl the workspace. It does not claim to isolate the live editor: an agent implemented as a VS Code extension with text-document access can still observe the decrypted document. SOPS Safe includes such extensions in its security-posture warning unless you explicitly trust them.

Compared with @signageos/vscode-sops

@signageos/vscode-sops is the established, broad, cross-platform option. SOPS Safe makes a narrower choice: Linux only, with stricter plaintext handling and commit semantics.

The signageOS behavior above is taken from its pinned 0.9.4 source: the decrypted sibling workflow and the temporary plaintext used during save.

Choose signageOS when cross-platform support and its larger configuration surface matter most. Choose SOPS Safe when you edit secrets on Linux and want the risks around coding-agent disclosure, plaintext persistence, concurrent changes, interrupted saves, and extension-host exposure treated as first-class concerns.

How it feels

1. Open an encrypted file in a trusted local workspace.
2. SOPS Safe recognizes it through sops filestatus and opens the decrypted virtual document automatically.
3. Edit with your normal VS Code language support.
4. Save normally. Only validated ciphertext replaces the source file.

To encrypt a new or existing plaintext file, save it first and run SOPS: Encrypt in Place. SOPS Safe uses the matching creation_rules entry from .sops.yaml; if encryption fails, the plaintext source is left unchanged.

Security posture

Run SOPS: Check Security Posture at any time. SOPS Safe reports two boundaries independently:

• whether VS Code's Backups directory is a private tmpfs;
• whether every enabled, non-built-in extension sharing the extension host has been explicitly trusted.

Trust Current Extensions records the reported extension IDs in the machine-local sops-safe.trustedExtensions setting. Newly installed extensions warn independently. SOPS: Reset Trusted Extensions clears that decision.

This is exposure reduction, not a sandbox. VS Code, built-in extensions, extensions you trust, the operating system, debuggers, screen capture, and the clipboard remain part of your security boundary.

Requirements

• Linux with a private tmpfs-backed $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
• VS Code 1.85 or newer
• SOPS available on PATH, or configured with sops-safe.sopsPath
• a trusted, local workspace
• working credentials for the recipients already in the file, or matching .sops.yaml creation rules when encrypting plaintext

SOPS Safe deliberately does not support untrusted workspaces, virtual workspaces, macOS, or Windows.

Commands

Settings

Installation

• Visual Studio Marketplace (VS Code): Install SOPS Safe from Visual Studio Marketplace.
• Open VSX Registry (code-server): In code-server's Extensions view, search for @id:jgus.sops-safe and install SOPS Safe.
• GitHub releases: Download sops-safe-<version>.vsix from the assets on the GitHub releases page.
  • VS Code: Run Extensions: Install from VSIX from the Command Palette and select the downloaded file.
  • code-server: Copy the downloaded file to the code-server host and run code-server --install-extension /path/to/sops-safe-<version>.vsix there.
• Nix: Use this flake's packages.<system>.sops-safe extension package.

License

MIT