Sesame
a local-first, open-source password manager
Details
- External ID
- 49483038
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Sesame
- Website domain
- usesesame.app
- Launched
- Aug. 28, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 66
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.8870967741935484
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 10, 2026, 5:31 a.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 10, 2026, 5:31 a.m.
Description
I have been working on Sesame, an open-source password manager that keeps your vault local by default. You don't need an account to create or use a vault, and the hosted service never receives the vault itself. It's still early software and the independent security review isn't finished yet, so I am mainly interested in feedback, testing, and people looking through the code.(Linux support is yet to be released on v0.1.2, but currently is in the works.)
Enrichment
- Theme
- self-hosted infrastructure and security tools
- Vertical
- Security
- Function
- Vertical SaaS
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- local-first password manager
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Production password managers require rigorous cryptographic implementations, secure memory management, and formal security audits where subtle bugs lead to total credential exposure.
What it would actually take: A secure password manager requires a core written in Rust/C using audited cryptographic primitives (e.g., Argon2id, ChaCha20-Poly1305, OS keychain/DPAPI integrations) and zeroize patterns for memory safety. Developing it requires deep applied cryptography and systems security expertise to avoid timing attacks, memory snooping, and improper nonce handling.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: 1Password, LastPass, Firefox password manager, Yubikey/Nitrokey hardware tokens, PrivacyGuides recommendations
Concerns raised: Supply chain attacks on password managers, Decrypting all passwords when unlocking any single password, 1Password CLI requires full account access for 10 minutes, Browser integration phishing vulnerabilities, LLM-generated passwords shared with provider
Feature requests: Flat Seal-like app network access restrictions for Android/Windows, Phishing-resistant browser autofill by specific website domain, Per-item authentication instead of process-wide access, Hardware-anchored encryption with physical user consent, Rate limiting and secure enclave integration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 78 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #14 of 79 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 289 days after the earliest competitor.
- Ravenpass · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.65
- KeeperPass · ph · 2026-09-23 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- OwnVault · ph · 2026-09-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Bramble · hn · 2026-07-02 · 153 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Vaultly Simple, secure password manager · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Keepr · hn · 2025-11-14 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Password manager · ph · 2026-09-22 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Lockenv · hn · 2025-12-08 · 105 upvotes · similarity 0.45
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.