gman is a command-line tool for managing and injecting secrets for your scripts, automations, and applications. It provides a single, secure interface to store, retrieve, and inject secrets so you can stop hand-rolling config files or sprinkling environment variables everywhere.

Overview

gman acts as a universal wrapper for any command that needs credentials. Store your secrets—API tokens, passwords, certs—with a provider, then either fetch them directly or run your command through gman to inject what it needs as environment variables, flags, or file content.

Features

Secure encryption for stored secrets
Pluggable providers (local by default; more can be added)
Git sync for local vaults to move secrets across machines
Command wrapping to inject secrets for any program
Customizable run profiles (env, flags, or files)
Consistent secret naming: input is snake_case; injected as UPPER_SNAKE_CASE
Direct retrieval via gman get ...
Dry-run to preview wrapped commands and secret injection

Example Use Cases

Create/Get/Delete Secrets Securely As You Need From Any Configured Provider

# Add a secret to the 'local' provider
echo "someApiKey" | gman add my_api_key

# Retrieve a secret from the 'aws_secrets_manager' provider
gman get -p aws_secrets_manager db_password

# Delete a secret from the 'local' provider
gman delete my_api_key

Automatically Inject Secrets Into Any Command

# Can inject secrets as environment variables into the 'aws' CLI command
gman aws sts get-caller-identity

# Inject secrets into 'docker run' command via '-e' flags
gman docker run --rm --entrypoint env busybox | grep -i 'token'

# Inject secrets into configuration files automatically for the 'managarr' application
gman managarr

Installation

Cargo

If you have Cargo installed, then you can install gman from Crates.io:

cargo install gman

# If you encounter issues installing, try installing with '--locked'
cargo install --locked gman

Configuration

gman reads a YAML configuration file located at an OS-specific path:

Linux

$HOME/.config/gman/config.yml

Mac

$HOME/Library/Application Support/gman/config.yml

Windows

%APPDATA%/Roaming/gman/config.yml

Default Configuration

gman supports multiple providers. Select one as the default and then list provider configurations.

---
default_provider: local
providers:
  - name: local
    provider: local
    password_file: ~/.gman_password
    # Optional Git sync settings for the 'local' provider
    git_branch: main # Defaults to 'main'
    git_remote_url: null # Set to enable Git sync (SSH or HTTPS)
    git_user_name: null # Defaults to global git config user.name
    git_user_email: null # Defaults to global git config user.email
    git_executable: null # Defaults to 'git' in PATH

# List of run configurations (profiles). See below.
run_configs: []

Providers

gman supports multiple providers for secret storage. The default provider is local, which stores secrets in an encrypted file on your filesystem. The CLI and config format are designed to be extensible so new providers can be documented and added without breaking existing setups. The following table shows the available and planned providers:

Key:

Symbol	Status
✅	Supported
🕒	Planned
🚫	Won't Add

Provider Name	Status	Configuration Docs	Comments
`local`	✅	Local
`aws_secrets_manager`	🕒
`aws_ssm_parameter_store`	🕒
`hashicorp_vault`	🕒
`azure_key_vault`	🕒
`gcp_secret_manager`	🕒
`1password`	🕒
`bitwarden`	🕒
`dashlane`	🕒		Waiting for CLI support for adding secrets
`lastpass`	🕒

Provider: `local`

The default local provider stores an encrypted vault file on your filesystem. Any time you attempt to access the local vault (e.g., adding, retrieving, or deleting secrets), gman will prompt you for the password you used to encrypt the applicable secrets.

Similar to Ansible Vault, gman lets you store the password in a file for convenience. This is done via the password_file configuration option. If you choose to use a password file, ensure that it is secured with appropriate file permissions (e.g., chmod 600 ~/.gman_password). The default file for the password file is ~/.gman_password.

For use across multiple systems, gman can sync with a remote Git repository.

Important Notes for Git Sync:

You must create the remote repository on your Git provider (e.g., GitHub) before attempting to sync.
The git_remote_url must be in SSH or HTTPS format (e.g., git@github.com:your-user/your-repo.git).
First sync behavior:
- If the remote already has content, gman sync adopts the remote state and discards uncommitted local changes in the vault directory to avoid merge conflicts.
- If the remote is empty, gman sync initializes the repository locally, creates the first commit, and pushes.

Example local provider config for Git sync:

default_provider: local
providers:
  - name: local
    provider: local
    git_branch: main
    git_remote_url: "git@github.com:my-user/gman-secrets.git"
    git_user_name: "Your Name"
    git_user_email: "your.email@example.com"

Run Configurations

Run configurations (or "profiles") tell gman how to inject secrets into a command. Three modes of secret injection are supported:

Environment Variables (default)
Command-Line Flags
Files

When you wrap a command with gman and don't specify a specific run configuration via --profile, gman will look for a profile with a name matching <command>. If found, it injects the specified secrets. If no profile is found, gman will error out and report that it could not find the run config with that name.

You can manually specify which run configuration to use with the --profile flag. Again, if no profile is found with that name, gman will error out.

Important: Secret names are always injected in `UPPER_SNAKE_CASE` format.

Environment Variable Secret Injection

By default, secrets are injected as environment variables. The two required fields are name and secrets.

Example: A profile for the aws CLI.

run_configs:
  - name: aws
    secrets:
      - aws_access_key_id
      - aws_secret_access_key

When you run gman aws ..., gman will fetch these two secrets and expose them as environment variables to the aws process.

Inject Secrets via Command-Line Flags

For applications that don't read environment variables, you can configure gman to pass secrets as command-line flags. This requires three additional fields: flag, flag_position, and arg_format.

flag: The flag to use (e.g., -e).
flag_position: An integer indicating where to insert the flag in the command's arguments. 1 is immediately after the command name.
arg_format: A string that defines how the secret is formatted. It must contain the placeholders {{key}} and {{value}}.

Example: A profile for docker run that uses the -e flag.

run_configs:
  - name: docker
    secrets:
      - my_app_api_key
      - my_app_db_password
    flag: -e
    flag_position: 2 # In 'docker run ...', the flag comes after 'run', so position 2.
    arg_format: "{{key}}={{value}}"

When you run gman docker run my-image, gman will execute a command similar to: docker run -e MY_APP_API_KEY=... -e MY_APP_DB_PASSWORD=... my-image

Inject Secrets into Files

For applications that require secrets to be provided via files, you can configure gman to automatically populate specified files with the secret values before executing the command, run the command, and then restore the original content regardless of command completion status.

This just requires one additional field:

files: A list of absolute file paths where the secret values should be written.

Example: An implicit profile for managarr that injects the specified secrets into the corresponding configuration file. More than one file can be specified, and if gman can't find any specified secrets, it will leave the file unchanged.

run_configs:
  - name: managarr
    secrets:
      - radarr_api_key
      - sonarr_api_key # Remember that secret names are always converted to UPPER_SNAKE_CASE
    files:
      - /home/user/.config/managarr/config.yml

And this is what my managarr configuration file looks like:

radarr:
  - name: Radarr
    host: 192.168.0.105
    port: 7878
    api_token: '{{RADARR_API_KEY}}' # This will be replaced by gman with the actual secret value
sonarr:
  - name: Sonarr
    host: 192.168.0.105
    port: 8989
    api_token: '{{sonarr_api_key}}' # gman is case-insensitive, so this will also be replaced correctly

Then, all you need to do to run managarr with the secrets injected is:

gman managarr

Detailed Usage

Storing and Managing Secrets

All secret names are automatically converted to snake_case.

Add a secret:

# The value is read from standard input
echo "your-secret-value" | gman add my_api_key

or don't provide a value to add the secret interactively:

gman add my_api_key

Retrieve a secret:
```
gman get my_api_key
```
Update a secret:
```
echo "new-secret-value" | gman update my_api_key
```
or don't provide a value to update the secret interactively:
```
gman add my_api_key
```
List all secret names:
```
gman list
```
Delete a secret:
```
gman delete my_api_key
```
Synchronize with remote secret storage (specific to the configured provider):
```
gman sync
```

Running Commands

Using a default profile:

# If an 'aws' profile exists, secrets are injected.
gman aws sts get-caller-identity

Specifying a profile:

# Manually specify which profile to use with --profile
gman --profile my-docker-profile docker run my-app

Dry Run:

# See what command would be executed without running it.
gman --dry-run aws s3 ls
# Output will show: aws -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=***** ... s3 ls

Multiple Providers and Switching

You can define multiple providers—even multiple of the same type—and switch between them per command.

Example: two AWS Secrets Manager providers named lab and prod.

default_provider: prod
providers:
  - name: lab
    provider: aws_secrets_manager
    # Additional provider-specific settings (e.g., region, role_arn, profile)
    # region: us-east-1
    # role_arn: arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/lab-access

  - name: prod
    provider: aws_secrets_manager
    # region: us-east-1
    # role_arn: arn:aws:iam::222222222222:role/prod-access

run_configs:
  - name: aws
    secrets:
      - aws_access_key_id
      - aws_secret_access_key

Switch providers on the fly using the provider name defined in providers:

# Use the default (prod)
gman aws s3 ls

# Explicitly use lab
gman --provider lab aws s3 ls

# Fetch a secret from prod
gman get my_api_key

# Fetch a secret from lab
gman --provider lab get my_api_key

Creator

Alex Clarke

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README.md

gman - Universal Credential Manager