Skeld

Programming is constant remote code execution.¹

Or have you inspected all your dependencies? It's easy to write a library that steals private ssh keys on the side.

Skeld mitigates this risk by opening projects in a restricted sandbox where only the required paths are accessible. A sandbox can be conveniently created via a terminal UI by selecting a project, which is then opened in the configured editor/IDE (inside a sandbox).

The paths that the sandbox can access are defined on a per-project basis:

# projects are specified with a single TOML file

[project]
project-dir = "~/dev/skeld"
# paths can be whitelisted read-only
whitelist-ro = [
  # some string interpolation is supported
  # (see `man 'skeld(7)'`, section "String Interpolation")
  "$(CONFIG)/nvim",
]
# paths can be whitelisted read-write
whitelist-rw = [
  "$(DATA)/nvim",
  "$(STATE)/nvim",
]
# including options from other files is also supported
include = ["rust"]

Installation

Note that only Linux is supported.

Important

Skeld depends on Bubblewrap, so it must be available in PATH.

• Pre-built binaries: Releases
• Using Cargo: cargo install skeld

Getting Started

Without any configuration, the skeld UI displays a blank screen. Some configuration is therefore inevitable. Below is an example configuration for the neovim editor.

Configuration

Create a file $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/skeld/config.toml with the following content:

# it is possible to disable the help text in the bottom right corner
disable-help = false

# colorscheme from the screenshot
[colorscheme]
normal = "#DCD7BA"
banner = "#E6C384"
heading = "#C0A36E"
label = "#727169"
keybind = "#6A9589"
background = "#1F1F28"

[[commands]]
name = "<edit>"
keybind = "e"
command = ["nvim"]
# whether to detach from terminal;
# should be true for GUI commands and false for TUI commands
detach = false

[[commands]]
name = "<quit>"
keybind = "q"
# if 'command' is empty, skeld quits immediately
command = []

# user-wide whitelists
[project]
# read-write whitelists
whitelist-rw = [
  "$(DATA)/nvim",
  "$(STATE)/nvim",
]
# read-only whitelists
whitelist-ro = [
  "~/.bashrc",
  "$(CONFIG)/nvim",

  "/usr",
  "/etc",
]
# symlink whitelists
# NOTE: depending on the system, these may not be symlinks;
#       so they may need to be in 'whitelist-ro'
whitelist-ln = [
  "/bin",
  "/lib",
  "/lib64",
]
add-tmpfs = [
  "/tmp",
]
# as long as no secrets are stored in environment variables,
# this should be fine
whitelist-all-envvars = true

# configure the editor/IDE used to open projects
[project.editor]
# command used when a project specifies a file to be opened initially
cmd-with-file = ["nvim", "$(FILE)"]
# command used when no initial file is specified
cmd-without-file = ["nvim", "."]
# whether to detach editor from terminal;
# should be true for GUI editors and false for TUI editors
detach = false

Refer to man 'skeld(7)' for all supported options.

Projects

To add a project, create a file at $XDG_DATA_HOME/skeld/projects/<your_project_name>.toml with the following content:

[project]
project-dir = "<your_project_directory>"
# optionally, a file to be opened initially can be specified
initial-file = "src/main.rs"

# project-specific whitelists
whitelist-dev = [
  "/dev/dri/",
]
# Language-specific whitelists can be separated into different a file.
# To do so, create a file at $XDG_DATA_HOME/skeld/include/<your_lang>.toml
# with the language-specific whitelists.
include = ["<your_lang>"]

Refer to man 'skeld(7)' for all supported options.

Documentation

The documentation is available at man 'skeld(7)'

Building

Requires the Rust Compiler.

cargo build --release
./target/release/skeld

To build the man page, scdoc is required.

scdoc < docs/skeld.7.scd > skeld.7

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Footnotes

1. This might be slightly overdramatized. ↩