FiloSottile/age

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

23335 stars · 665 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

age is a simple, modern, and secure file encryption tool, format, and Go library with small explicit keys, no config options, and UNIX-style composability. It supports post-quantum encryption, SSH keys, and hardware tokens like YubiKeys via plugins.

Use cases

• encrypt files with a modern simple tool
• encrypt a tarball before uploading to cloud storage
• encrypt files to a public key from the command line
• decrypt files with a key file
• encrypt secrets in scripts piped through other unix tools
• generate encryption key pairs
• encrypt files to SSH keys or YubiKeys

When to choose

• you want simple file encryption without managing GPG keyrings and config
• you need scriptable, composable encryption in shell pipelines
• you want a well-specified, audited encryption format with post-quantum support
• you need a Go library for file encryption

When to avoid

• you need full PGP features like signing, web of trust, or key servers
• you must interoperate with existing GPG-encrypted data
• you need encrypted email or disk encryption

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

cryptography security cli file-system security privacy developer-tools windows cross-platform go cli file-encryption encryption age-format post-quantum keygen unix-composability go-library command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="FiloSottile/age")