@forgesworn/fold-kit

Circle primitives for private Nostr groups that nobody operates: a room key per epoch, sealed to each device that stays; link invitations as capabilities; member removal by rekey; device credentials so a person approves a device once and it signs from then on.

Fold-kit is extracted from KithMoot so that other ForgeSworn clients can share one circle model. KithMoot's wire format does not change: every derivation label and event shape moved byte-identical from the pinned source commit and is pinned by known-answer vectors (see EXTRACTION.md). Framework-free: owns no storage, UI, relay defaults or identity keys, and no relay I/O of its own - callers inject a transport.

Status: T1 extraction complete (see EXTRACTION.md). Not yet published to npm under this API; pin an immutable Git commit until it is (see Install). KithMoot itself has not cut over to this kit yet - it still carries its own copy of these modules.

Install

npm install @forgesworn/fold-kit

Not yet published to npm. Until it is, pin an immutable Git commit:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@forgesworn/fold-kit": "github:forgesworn/fold-kit#<commit>"
  }
}

Peer dependencies

{
  "peerDependencies": {
    "nostr-tools": ">=2.24.2 <3",
    "@noble/hashes": "^1.8.0",
    "@noble/curves": "^2.0.1"
  }
}

Peers, not dependencies, so a consumer such as KithMoot keeps a single copy of nostr-tools (guarded by its own overrides and version-guard test) and of the noble libraries, at the same versions KithMoot already pins. @noble/hashes is pinned to its 1.x major only: its 2.x major changed its hkdf signature to reject a string info argument (this kit's HKDF calls pass strings) and its exports map no longer resolves the bare subpaths this kit and KithMoot both import without a .js suffix, so 2.x cannot satisfy this kit's imports as written.

ESM only ("type": "module"). Node.js >=22.13.

Exports

Two entry points: @forgesworn/fold-kit (everything) and @forgesworn/fold-kit/lane (just the lane helpers, for a consumer that only wants to classify a relay as public/sheltered/direct without pulling in the rest).

Identity, verification, hex

• hexEquals, normaliseHex - constant-shape hex comparison and lower-casing
• verifyEventUncached, boundedEventVerifier - Nostr event signature checks
• localIdentity, ParticipantIdentity, UnsignedEvent - the signer seam every codec below is built on

Wire kinds and types

• KINDS - the circle layer's kind numbers (CREDENTIAL, CHAT, INVITATION_REQUEST, INVITATION_GRANT, INVITATION_RETIREMENT, GROUP_INVITATION, ROOM_REKEY, EPOCH_REQUEST, EPOCH_GRANT) - a subset of KithMoot's full registry. CHAT (1460) is included because a downstream app's own board events are designed to share KithMoot's chat kind, so a relay cannot tell a board from a chat (see docs/extraction-plan-excerpt.md).
• DeviceCredential, AccessTier, AgentRule, RoomPolicy, KindredProof - the link-layer wire types
• RelayTransport - the transport seam (publish/subscribe/close) every codec below that talks to a relay takes as a dependency. This kit declares its own interface rather than importing KithMoot's relay pool, which has not moved here (see EXTRACTION.md).

Rooms, credentials, access

• generateRoomSecret, deriveRoom, encodeJoinUrl, decodeJoinUrl, parseRoomPolicy - the legacy v1 join URL and room id/key derivation
• createDeviceCredential, verifyDeviceCredential, PERSON_CREDENTIAL_MAX_SECONDS - room-scope and person-scope device credentials. createDeviceCredential throws RestampedCredentialExpiryError for a person-scope credential a restamping signer would make unverifiable everywhere (see CHANGELOG.md) - catch it and retry with a shorter expiresAt margin
• issueKindredProof, evaluateAccess - kindred-tier admission
• sanitiseDisplayName, MAX_DISPLAY_NAME_LENGTH - defused display names
• safeRelayUrls, safeIceUrls, assertNetworkHintBounds, and the related MAX_* bounds - link envelope network hints

Links and invitations

• parseRoomLink, encodeRoomLink, RoomLink - the v1/v2/v3 link envelope
• createRoomInvitation, roomInvitation, deriveInvitationId, encodeInvitationRequest, decodeInvitationRequest, verifyInvitationDelegation, encodeInvitationGrant, decodeRoomAdmissionGrant, encodeInvitationRetirement, decodeInvitationRetirementNotice, hostRoomInvitation, requestRoomAdmission - the v2 live rendezvous invitation, its delegation chain and retirement
• encodePersistentInvitation, decodePersistentInvitation, requestPersistentRoomAdmission - the v3 stored group invitation (1463). Pass endsAt (unix seconds, after now and at most 30 days on) for a conference room: the encrypted body carries ends and the event a NIP-40 expiration tag, so relays drop it when the room ends; the decoder returns endsAt and refuses a tag that disagrees with the body
• Room relays: pass relays (one to eight distinct safe relay URLs in canonical normalizeURL form, e.g. wss://relay.example.com/) and the encrypted body carries them after ends. Every member's pool includes them, so members never land on disjoint relays. The decoder returns relays and refuses the whole envelope on a malformed list; requestPersistentRoomAdmission keeps the relays of the newest signed copy that names any. isInvitationRelays, requireInvitationRelays and MAX_INVITATION_RELAYS are the rule
• withExpiration, isRoomEnds, requireRoomEnds, MAX_ROOM_ENDS_SECONDS - the conference-room expiration rule: add the end as an expiration tag, keep an earlier one, lower a later one. encodeInvitationRetirement takes endsAt, and the epoch encoders, hostRoomEpoch and requestRoomEpoch take expiresAt, to tag what they sign the same way

Epochs (removal by rekey)

• deriveEpoch, generateEpochSecret - per-epoch id/key derivation
• encodeRekeyEvent, peekRekeyEvent, decodeRekeyEvent - the durable rekey notice (1462), sealed per remaining device
• encodeEpochRequest, decodeEpochRequest, encodeEpochGrant, decodeEpochGrant, epochRequestAdmission, deriveEpochRequestKey - catch-up for a device that missed a rekey
• hostRoomEpoch, requestRoomEpoch, EpochRefusedError - the live request/grant desk
• canonicalAdmins, signAdmins, verifyAdmins - the authority's signed admin list
• canonicalChannels, signChannels, verifyChannels, CHANNEL_NAME, RESERVED_CHANNELS - the authority's signed channel list

Scoped labels and sub-key certificates (a consuming app's own keys)

• deriveScoped - derive an app-defined { id, key } pair from an epoch key under an app's own labelled namespace (e.g. myapp/v1/board/<id>/update), so an app can ride the same epoch as the roster and the chat - and rotate on the same rekey - without ever deriving a key that could be mistaken for a KithMoot channel. Refuses this kit's own protocol namespace and any label outside SCOPED_LABEL_PATTERN.
• createSubKeyCertificate, verifySubKeyCertificate, SUB_KEY_CERTIFICATE_SCOPE - a small, locally-signed statement that a credentialled device minted a particular app-derived key (a deriveScoped output, typically) for a particular scoped id. Rides inside a signed message's ciphertext alongside the device credential it depends on; never published on its own, and never accepted by verifyDeviceCredential (its scope: "sub" is a value that function already refuses). Verification is strict and canonical: exactly four two-element tags in a fixed order, empty content, an expiration in canonical decimal form compared as the exact tag string (not numerically) against the device credential passed in - verifySubKeyCertificate reads that credential's own device and expiration tags itself, rather than trusting a caller to have copied them out correctly.

Channel (main entry, and deriveChannel only)

• deriveChannel, CHANNEL_ID_INFO, CHANNEL_KEY_INFO, MAX_CHANNEL_NAME_LENGTH - a named channel's id/key, derived from the room key. ChatLog and the chat event codecs stay in KithMoot; only the derivation moved.

Lane (@forgesworn/fold-kit/lane)

• LANES, LANE_MEANING, LANE_LABEL, LANE_GLYPH, isLane, laneOfRelayUrl, laneOfRelays, weakestLane, isDowngrade - classifies a relay as public, sheltered or direct

How it relates to its siblings

• covey-kit: circle state derived from a root, latest-wins configuration, per-recipient gift wraps.
• roost-kit: transport for private circles (gift wrap, relay fan-out, offline outbox).
• fold-kit: symmetric epoch keys with a pinned authority, sealed rekeys and link invitations. Suited to high-rate encrypted streams such as chat and collaborative documents, where a wrap per recipient per message is too costly.

Nothing is shared in code between the three today: the key models are incompatible (a static epoch secret with sealed rekeys here, versus a deterministic reseed from a root in covey-kit), the trust models differ (pinned authority here versus caller-enforced roles in covey-kit), and covey-kit/roost-kit pin a different nostr-tools version than this kit and KithMoot share.

Development

npm install
npm run build       # compile TypeScript into dist/
npm test            # run the Vitest suite, including both vector files
npm run typecheck    # type-check src/ and test/ (matching KithMoot, vectors/ is not tsc-checked)
npm run vectors      # run only the vector-verification suites
npm run diff-source  # compare moved modules against the pinned source commit (needs FOLD_KIT_SOURCE_DIR)
npm run generate-fold # regenerate vectors/fold-vectors.json (needs a prior build)
npm run bundle-check # esbuild browser bundle check (needs a prior build)
npm run check        # typecheck + test + diff-source

There is no separate lint script.

Licence

MIT