What This Is
proxima·red is a small set of open source web tools for secure sharing and writing. It is maintained by a single developer and hosted on EU infrastructure. It is not a company and not building toward anything commercial.
The source code is public and the architecture is documented so that anyone who wants to verify can. That verification is possible but not automatic: using any web-based tool requires some degree of trust. Publishing the source makes scrutiny possible. It does not remove the need for trust entirely.
How the Tools Work
The encrypted tools are built around a zero-knowledge model: the server stores only what it cannot avoid storing, and never in a form it can read.
The practical consequence: even if the server were compromised and its entire database extracted, your content would remain unreadable. There is no key to steal because the server never had one.
Not all tools are end-to-end encrypted. Where a tool operates without E2EE, that will be clearly stated in the interface — not buried in a tooltip or a privacy policy.
The Tools
Zero-knowledge password sharing. Enter a password, receive a link. The password is encrypted in your browser before it leaves. The recipient decrypts it in their browser when they open the link. Shares expire by time, by access count, or both. No account required.
Encrypted note sharing. A browser-based editor for writing and sharing notes and documents. Content is encrypted before it leaves your browser, using the same model as [pass·]. Sharing is optional — the editor works locally without generating a link.
The Name
Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to our solar system — a red dwarf sitting about 4.2 light-years away, part of the Alpha Centauri triple system alongside its two much brighter companions. It is the closest star to Earth after the sun, yet invisible to the naked eye.
The name proxima·red takes both halves of that: proxima from Proxima Centauri, red from its classification as a red dwarf. The dot in the middle mirrors the structure of the domain with its top level domain while giving the name a small typographic identity of its own; and styled in red, it doubles as a small representation of the red dwarf.
Accounts
All tools are usable without an account. An account becomes useful for managing shared content across sessions — keeping track of previously shared passwords, returning to a note before sharing it, or maintaining an overview of what you have shared and when.
Sign-up requires no email address. Each account is assigned a randomly generated eight-digit ID; only that ID and the account creation date are stored unencrypted. Everything else is encrypted using a key derived from your password via PBKDF2. The server holds ciphertext and nothing more.
A forgotten password means that data is unrecoverable. There is nothing to recover it with.
What Will Not Be Built
Some decisions are made once and not revisited.
- — No telemetry or analytics Not anonymised, not aggregated, not opt-out. There is no tracking infrastructure and there will not be one.
- — No weakening of encryption No features that weaken or bypass encryption without an explicit, informed choice by the person using the tool. If encryption can be turned off, that state will be visible and unambiguous.
- — No third-party data integrations No integrations with advertising networks, data brokers, or third-party analytics platforms.
Source & License
All proxima·red tools are licensed under the AGPL-3.0. The AGPL was chosen for a specific reason: unlike the standard GPL, it requires anyone who modifies and deploys a proxima·red tool over a network to publish their source changes under the same terms.
Anyone is free to fork and deploy a proxima·red tool. Forks must use a different name and visual identity. The AGPL licenses the code, not the proxima·red name. This protects users: if you encounter a tool presenting itself as proxima·red, it is the original.
The source code is available on GitHub. Bug reports and contributions are welcome via GitHub Issues.
Contact
Questions, support, or security reports: signal@proxima.red
For feature suggestions or to get involved with the project, open an issue or start a discussion on GitHub.
If you find these tools useful and want to support the project: Ko-fi.