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Thinking Machine Labs

Part 8 — recovery

For when there is no device left to grant from.

const bundle = await engine.exportBundle('correct horse battery staple');
// a base64 string — every graph key this device holds, sealed under the passphrase


// on a brand-new device, after SkmEngine.open:
await engine.importBundle(bundle, 'correct horse battery staple');
  • The passphrase must be at least 8 characters. Sealing is not optional: an unsealed bundle is a plaintext copy of the whole account.
  • The bundle carries graph keys only. A restored machine is a new device with its own keypairs that happens to already know the graph keys.
  • Importing wipes the local record store and re-pulls, because a store half-filled from a previous identity is worse than an empty one.
  • A wrong passphrase throws wrong passphrase for this bundle; anything that is not a bundle throws that does not look like an skm recovery bundle.

Lost keys mean lost data. With every device gone and no recovery bundle, the ciphertext is unrecoverable. The relay cannot help. An app built on skm must tell its users so in words, at the moment the first key is created — not in a settings page nobody opens.