# SPIFFE

The SPIFFE Runtime Environment

Repository: https://github.com/spiffe/spire
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/spiffe
Homepage: https://spiffe.io
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-26T16:20:10+00:00
Link (homepage): https://spiffe.io
Link (site_page): https://spiffe.io/docs/latest

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3309, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 12, "gap_med": 19.0, "n_releases_24m": 33}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2500, forks 652 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:56.915967+00:00)

## What it is
SPIFFE is a framework and set of standards for issuing cryptographic identities to workloads, and SPIRE (the SPIFFE Runtime Environment) is its reference implementation written in Go. It provides a universal identity control plane that attests workloads and issues short-lived X.509 SVIDs and JWTs across heterogeneous infrastructure.

## Use cases
- secure microservices communication with mutual TLS without manual certificate management
- authenticate services to databases without passwords or API keys
- implement zero trust workload identity across clusters and clouds
- bridge service mesh identity between organizations without sharing keys
- issue short-lived X.509 and JWT identities to workloads in Kubernetes
- replace static secrets with automatically rotated workload credentials

## When to choose
- you need cryptographically attested workload identity across heterogeneous platforms (VMs, Kubernetes, clouds)
- you want to eliminate long-lived secrets, API keys, and manually rotated certificates
- you are building a zero trust architecture or multi-organization service mesh federation

## When to avoid
- you only need simple single-service TLS termination from a load balancer
- your stack is a single monolith with no inter-service authentication needs
- you cannot operate the SPIRE server/agent infrastructure or its node attestation requirements

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: auth, security, cryptography, microservices, api-gateway
- domain: security, microservices, cloud-computing
- platform: windows, cloud, go, self-hosted
- tags: spiffe, spire, workload-identity, zero-trust, x509, jwt, service-mesh, mutual-tls, identity-control-plane, devops, linux, macos, kubernetes, docker

## Member repositories
- spiffe/spire (main) score 99
- spiffe/spiffe (docs) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.915967+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:26:55.840921+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/spiffe/spire (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.915967+00:00, sha 8c618c215ada)
  - homepage: https://spiffe.io (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:06.195480+00:00, sha fb2ddcf52d2a)
  - site_page: https://spiffe.io/docs/latest (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:06.198180+00:00, sha 8877d45c565d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.