Feedback needed for my 12yo project that I completely re-wrote this year.

vnatco — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 15:43:02 +0000

I'm not here to promote anything. I'm just looking for a few developers to spend 15 minutes with it and tell me honestly what they think. That's the part I can't do alone.

I've tried almost every password manager out there. I always came back to the same idea - I just want something fast and simple that gets out of my way. This project is not trying to compete with anyone. My goal was to build something I personally use every day and finally finish it properly. If a few other developers find it useful, that's enough for me.

Now here's why I built it.

In 2012 I was managing 100+ passwords - servers, SSH keys, API keys, projects, everything. Every web-based manager I tried felt slow. I didn't want autofill. I didn't want a browser extension. I just wanted to hit a hotkey, type 2 letters, and have my password on the clipboard in under 2 seconds.

So I built one. C# wrapped around an HTML UI with AES-256 encryption, lived in the system tray, CTRL+ALT+Z to summon it. Worked great for over a decade. The problem: it was local-only. Every OS reinstall meant manually migrating it. I ended up with a pile of duplicates and conflicting vault files. It was embarrassing.

So I finally rewrote it properly: cloud-synced, zero-knowledge, cross-platform, and self-hostable. Same philosophy - no browser extensions, no autofill, no bloat. Just fast keyboard-driven password retrieval with vault isolation per project.

KeyHive: https://github.com/vnatco/keyhive | https://keyhive.app

Tech choices:

Vanilla JS only - no frameworks, no bundlers, fully auditable
Argon2id (64 MB / 3 iterations) + AES-256-GCM, all in an isolated Web Worker
One codebase builds to web, Electron, and Capacitor (iOS/Android)
CTRL+ALT+Z still works in the desktop app - old habits die hard
AGPL-3.0, self-hostable, point it at your own backend

Built this for myself first. Still the target user. If you manage more than just website passwords and you've ever felt like every password manager was built for someone else - try it and tell me what you think.

DEV Community: vnatco

Feedback needed for my 12yo project that I completely re-wrote this year.