There is no login. Your key is who you are.
An encrypted key file, whose private half only opens on your own computer, is what unlocks Vigia — and you choose where it lives. On a pen drive that leaves with you: pull it and the console locks, a lock, not a logout, with your shells and every running job alive underneath. Or on this computer, sealed under a password only you know. Touch ID or Windows Hello stands behind either one, and you can move the key from one home to the other whenever you like. Nothing is sent anywhere to be checked, so there is no account to phish.
The door, in order
The key
On a stick small enough to leave with its owner — drives over 128 GB and Time Machine disks are refused, with no override: a drive nobody would carry to the bathroom is not a second factor. Or on the computer, where its password is asked instead. More than one account here? The door lists them by the name and company on the licence.
Touch ID or Windows Hello
Asked once the key has opened, never before. A Mac with no sensor falls back to its password, Windows Hello to its own PIN; where a computer has neither, the key's PIN — or the account's password — stands in, and the screen always says which.
The map
Vigia opens on your servers. Being logged in is the authentication: no Touch ID per action. Root on a box is your saved password through sudo, sealed under your key.
Two homes for the same key, and a way between them
Asked once, right after the activation key: where does your key live? Neither answer is final.
On a pen drive
The key is sealed to this computer and the drive is the protection: it leaves with you, and nothing on the computer opens your account without it. No password exists. A PIN can sit on the drive for computers with no Touch ID or Windows Hello.
On this computer
Nothing to carry. A password of twelve characters or more seals the key — it is not checked against anything, it is what the key is encrypted under — so the file is noise to anyone who copies it or takes the computer. Five wrong answers and the account stops answering for fifteen minutes.
Move it whenever you like
Setup → Move to a pen drive, or Move to this computer. The same account either way: same key, same servers, same saved logins, same licences, and the session stays open through it. The new home is written and proven to open before the old one is removed; a duplicate of the old drive is no longer accepted, and Setup takes the old key off it.
The account is a key you paste once
A new account opens with the activation key from create-account, opened on your computer with the envelope Vigia carries and LockFlare's signature checked locally. It is kept beside the identity, wherever your key lives, and carries your free server licenses.
A server is a key for one address
A server license is issued for one IP address and carries it inside, signed. Adding a server is pasting the key; the address comes out of it. A key issued to another account is refused, so twenty accounts can never be pooled onto one map. The shell itself is never refused for a license.
Everything Vigia keeps is sealed
Saved logins, certificates and their keys, repository secrets and API keys live on your computer under your key's own signature. The file is useless to anyone who copies it.
Several accounts, one computer
Several keys can live on one machine — on drives, on the computer, or both. The door lists them; a session pins to its key and other keys' servers are never listed. A colleague's key opens their map, not yours, and one licence opens one account per computer.
For the days something goes wrong
Four ceremonies, each one page in Setup that is the documentation, with the button at the bottom.
The encrypted backup beside the key
One file beside your key — on the pen drive, or on the computer — holding everything Vigia has — the map, the boards, snippets, tunnels, templates, diagrams, clusters, the audit ledger, the certificate vault and the saved credentials — rewriting itself as you work. Sealed twice: under your passphrase, the path that works on a new machine, and under the drive's signature, so the automatic rewrite needs no passphrase. A fresh Vigia with a verified key offers the restore at the door, before anything draws. With the key on the computer, Save a backup file puts the key and this backup into one file you keep somewhere else, and Restore an account from a backup file, at the door of any computer, brings it all back under the same passphrase.
A travel copy for a second computer
A key is bound to the machine that made it. The travel copy is the same key pair, id and account license sealed under a passphrase, so a new computer enrols the same key — every server license still holds — and the backup brings the whole map back. Possession plus a secret instead of possession plus a machine; the trade-off is said on screen.
A duplicate for the drawer
For a key on a pen drive. A locked, full-screen ceremony makes a twin: the key read into memory under Touch ID while the source is plugged, so the screen can say unplug your key and mean it; the new stick watched for, written, read back, and only then called ready.
Recovery, the worst day
Key lost, no backup, computer gone. Recover takes the account's email, password and one of its server addresses, mails a six-digit code, and hands back a bundle: the account license and every server key as one string. Pasted at the door, everything comes back. Vigia sends nothing; the visit is the browser's.
Removing a server, with its license
Remove permanently hands the remaining days back to the account as credit; Remove and add another moves the license and its time to a new address. Both finish on lockflare.com and the note waits in Setup until you press Done.
Start with a pen drive, or with nothing at all
Keep your key on any stick under 128 GB, or on this computer behind a password. Move it whenever you like.