Env to fnox

env-to-fnox: Migrate .env to fnox

fnox keeps secrets out of your repo by storing only references in a fnox.toml and resolving the real values from a vault at run time. fnox.toml never contains a secret value, so (in solo repos) it is safe to commit. This skill walks a .env file through to fnox, defaulting to Bitwarden Secrets Manager (the bitwarden-sm provider + bws CLI).

Two Bitwarden products — don't confuse them. Secrets Manager (bws CLI, fnox type = "bitwarden-sm") is purpose-built for app/dev secrets: a machine-account access token scoped to one project, read and write, no master-password unlock, works headless/CI. The older Password Manager (bw CLI, fnox type = "bitwarden") is your personal vault — read-only from fnox and references items by name. This skill uses Secrets Manager; see the note in step 4 for the Password Manager variant.

fnox is provider-agnostic — Secrets Manager, 1Password, age, the OS keychain, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, and HashiCorp Vault are all supported. Swap the provider block in step 4 for a different backend.

When to use

• A repo has real secrets sitting in .env / .env.local.
• The user wants secrets out of plaintext / out of version control.
• Setting up secrets management for a new project.

Workflow

Work through these in order. Verify a real secret resolves before deleting anything.

1. Analyze the existing .env

Read the .env (and .env.local, .env.*) and categorise each entry:

• Real secrets — API tokens, DB passwords, private keys, OAuth client secrets, signing keys. These move into the vault.
• Non-secret config — ports, hostnames, feature flags, public keys, NODE_ENV. These do not belong in a vault; keep them as plain defaults in fnox.toml or mise.toml.

List what you found and which bucket each falls into before touching the vault.

2. Install the tools and authenticate

mise use -g fnox bitwarden-secrets-manager   # installs fnox + the bws CLI
fnox --version && bws --version              # verify

Secrets Manager auth is a machine-account access token, not a login. One-time, in the Secrets Manager web console: create a project, create a machine account, grant it access to the project, and generate an access token (shown once). Then:

export BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN="<your-access-token>"   # fnox and bws both read this

The token only decrypts/edits the secrets in its project — it can't touch a personal password vault. Keep it out of committed files (see Guardrails for caching it safely).

3. Store the secrets in the vault (this provider is read and write)

Unlike the Password Manager provider, bitwarden-sm can write — so fnox creates secrets for you, and bws can create/edit them directly. Either works:

# Via fnox (also writes the reference into fnox.toml):
fnox set DATABASE_URL "postgres://..." --provider bws --key-name "database-url"

# Or via the bws CLI directly:
bws secret create database-url "postgres://..." <PROJECT_ID>   # create
bws secret list                                                # find a secret's ID
bws secret edit <SECRET_ID> --value "postgres://new..."        # edit

Use clear, stable key names (e.g. database-url) — fnox.toml references secrets by key.

4. Configure fnox.toml (references only)

fnox init                                          # creates fnox.toml
fnox provider add bws bitwarden-sm                 # registers the provider

[providers]
bws = { type = "bitwarden-sm", project_id = "<PROJECT_ID>" }   # or set BWS_PROJECT_ID

[secrets]
# value = the secret's KEY NAME in Secrets Manager (NOT the secret itself)
DATABASE_URL = { provider = "bws", value = "database-url" }
STRIPE_KEY   = { provider = "bws", value = "stripe-api-key" }

# Non-secret config stays as plain defaults (no provider):
# PORT = { value = "3000" }

Append /note or /key to a value for those fields (e.g. value = "database-url/note").

Password Manager variant: for the personal-vault provider instead, use bw = { type = "bitwarden" }, reference items by name (value = "ItemName" → the item's password field, or "ItemName/fieldName"), and populate the vault yourself — that provider is read-only, so fnox set --provider bw would only inline the value (don't). Auth there is export BW_SESSION=$(bw unlock --raw).

5. Wire it into the run-time

Use fnox's own shell integration, not mise. Both fnox activate and fnox exec resolve secrets via the real fnox binary, never through mise.

• Interactive (auto-load on cd): once in your shell profile (~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc):

  eval "$(fnox activate bash)"   # zsh: fnox activate zsh
  

  This installs a prompt hook that loads a repo's fnox.toml secrets on directory entry and unloads them on exit (like direnv/mise). BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN must be in the environment; if fnox errors with an auth message, the token is missing/expired.
• Non-interactive / CI / tasks: wrap commands in fnox exec -- <cmd>, e.g. fnox exec -- npm run dev, fnox exec -- kamal deploy, or in a mise task:

  [tasks.dev]
  run = "fnox exec -- bin/dev"
  

Do NOT load fnox via mise.toml [env] _.source (or any mise env directive). When fnox is a mise-managed tool it lives on PATH as a mise shim; calling it from inside mise's own env evaluation re-enters mise, which re-runs the directive → an infinite bash → fnox → mise fork loop that exhausts the kernel task limit (observed on mise 2026.6.1). fnox's author keeps the two tools deliberately separate for this reason — fnox activate's hook calls the resolved binary path directly, so it cannot re-enter mise.

6. Decide commit vs. gitignore for fnox.toml

• Solo repo: commit fnox.toml (references + a project ID — no secret values) so the setup travels with the repo.
• Repo shared with people who don't use fnox: add fnox.toml to .gitignore so it stays local and collaborators are unaffected.
• Either way, keep .env* gitignored.

7. Verify, then remove the .env

fnox list                          # shows configured secrets (names, not values)
fnox exec -- printenv DATABASE_URL # confirm the value resolves inside the process

Only once a real secret resolves correctly: delete the now-redundant .env, and commit the fnox.toml/mise.toml/.gitignore changes.

Guardrails

• Never put a secret value into fnox.toml or any committed file — only references.
• The access token is itself a secret. Don't commit it or paste it into fnox.toml. To avoid a plaintext token in your shell profile, cache it in the OS keychain via fnox's global config (the keychain provider must be registered there first, or set errors with "Provider 'keychain' not found"):

  fnox init -g --skip-wizard                 # once, if no global config exists
  fnox provider add keychain keychain -g     # register the provider globally
  fnox set -g BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN "<token>" --provider keychain   # set takes -g; get does not
  

  Then load it in your shell profile (only a reference is stored in config; the value lives in the keychain): export BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN="$(fnox get -c ~/.config/fnox/config.toml BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN)".
• Confirm fnox.toml has no plaintext secrets before committing (grep for known values).
• If secret resolution fails, suspect a missing/expired BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN first — do not fall back to writing a plaintext .env.

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Credit: Adapted from Nate Berkopec's env-to-fnox skill, which targets 1Password; this version defaults to Bitwarden Secrets Manager.