Specified · Specification
Palimpsest
The path your keystrokes took is the secret. The string they spelled is not.
Anyone interested in a key that a shoulder-surfer cannot read off the screen.
- Built on
- Specification + Cryptography
- Specified in full
- Written out before any of it was built
- Status
- Designed in full, build not started
What it is
Two people who both end up with hello in a password field have different credentials if one typed it straight through and the other typed hellp, backspaced and typed o. Palimpsest captures the full ordered edit stream, canonicalises it into a deterministic transcript, and uses that as the credential.
The repository is honest about its threat model up front: it defends against attacks that see the rendered value, not against an attacker who owns the input path. That caveat is the first section of the specification, not a footnote.
Capabilities
What it actually does.
Anyone interested in a key that a shoulder-surfer cannot read off the screen.
Ordered keystroke edit
Ordered keystroke edit stream canonicalised into a deterministic transcript
Characters typed
Characters typed and deleted never appear in the field but remain part of the secret
Threat model stated up front
Threat model stated up front, including what the scheme explicitly does not defend against
How it works
3 moves, end to end.
This is how Palimpsest works, not a set of steps you can follow yet — it is specified and not distributed.
Read the specification
The design is written out in full — the mechanism, the edge cases and the parts that do not work yet.
Check the reasoning
Every decision carries the alternative it was chosen over.
Build from it
A specification an engineer can read is a specification an agent can read.
Specification
Made of, and made when.
Read from the repository at build time rather than typed onto a marketing page.
- State
- Specified
- Discipline
- Research
- Shape
- Specification
- Last change
- Jul 2026
- Specification
- Cryptography
Next
Build Palimpsest
The design is finished. Ask about implementing it, funding it, or taking it somewhere else.