Signing keys & identity
Every change you make in Altretta is signed by your identity — an Ed25519 signing key generated on your device — so "you signed this" stays true across time and machines. This page is where you manage that identity.
Your signing key never leaves your device unless you explicitly export it. Altretta doesn't mint your identity on a server — it's yours, generated locally, and it's what makes your signed history attributable to you.
Your author name
The author name is the human-readable label stamped onto every signed action you create. It's what you and your teammates see when reviewing history — "who made this change." Set it to something recognizable; on a shared team brain it's how contributions are told apart at a glance.
The author name is a label for humans. The cryptographic proof of who signed an action is the key itself — the name is convenience, the key is truth.
Your key fingerprint
Your keypair has a short fingerprint — a compact, human-checkable digest of your public key. Use it to confirm you're looking at the right identity: when a teammate imports your public key, comparing fingerprints out-of-band (in person, over a call) is the simplest way to be sure the key they trusted is really yours.
Back up and restore your keypair
Your signing key is the one thing that can't be regenerated identically — lose it and you lose the ability to keep signing as you. Back it up.
Export your keypair
Altretta exports your keypair as a passphrase-encrypted file. Choose a strong passphrase — the export is only as safe as it is.
Store it safely
Keep the encrypted export somewhere durable and private — a password manager or an offline backup. Anyone who has both the file and the passphrase can sign as you.
Restore on another device
Import the encrypted file and enter the passphrase. Your key is restored — and with it your fingerprint, which is derived from the key. Restart Altretta for the imported identity to take effect on that device.
The encrypted export carries your key only, not your author name. After importing on a second machine, set your author name again in Identity settings — otherwise your signatures are the same but the name beside them isn't. A name change likewise takes effect from the next startup.
Restoring the same keypair on a second machine is exactly how "you signed this" stays true across devices. Without the restore, a second machine would generate a different key and your history would show two authors.
Sharing your public identity
Your Identity settings show both public keys explicitly — your signing public key (Ed25519) and your encryption public key (X25519) — and let you export your public identity as a small file. That file contains no secret: it is what you hand to someone so they can verify your signatures, or add you to a team vault.
Known identities
Signing proves you made a change. Known identities is the other half: import other people's public identities (the same file described above) so Altretta can attribute and verify their signatures too.
When you import a peer's public key, Altretta can:
- Attribute actions they authored to a name you recognize, instead of an anonymous key.
- Verify their signatures — confirming an action they signed really came from that key and hasn't been tampered with.
You only ever import a peer's public key — never their private signing key. Verifying signatures is a public-key operation; nobody has to share a secret to be trusted.
This is the foundation for a verifiable team brain: on an encrypted, shared vault, every contribution is signed by its author and checkable by everyone who has that author's public identity.
How identity ties into the rest of Altretta
| Feature | Role of your identity |
|---|---|
| Signed history | Each action is signed with your key and stamped with your author name. |
| Review inbox approvals | Approving an AI proposal is a signed action — signed as you. |
| Team encryption | Known identities let a shared vault attribute and verify every member's changes. |
Related
Settings
Back to the settings overview.
Signed history (the DAG)
The tamper-evident action log your key signs into.
Team encryption
Shared, encrypted vaults where known identities attribute every change.
License & activation
Your account and plan — separate from your local signing identity.
Glossary
Definitions for Ed25519, fingerprint, signed action, and more.