bitlogin/README.md

BitLogin

login for normies.

A static, relay-backed portable account protocol: a familiar login name and password that unlocks a portable Nostr identity, plus an independent 12-word recovery phrase. Encrypted account material lives on public Nostr relays — no account server, no password-reset email, no database.

This repo implements the protocol from docs/spec.md (v0.3) as a modular system any static site can embed for login and Nostr signing.

Layout

packages/
  core/    @bitlogin/core   — protocol implementation: crypto, capsules, Nostr
                              relay I/O, account flows. Framework- and DOM-free,
                              runs in Node or a browser/worker.
  widget/  @bitlogin/widget — <bitlogin-auth> custom element + a NIP-07-shaped
                              window.nostr provider, backed by a dedicated
                              crypto Web Worker. Built with Vite into two
                              static files any site can <script> in.
  demo/    @bitlogin/demo   — plain static site (no build step of its own)
                              consuming the widget: a landing/branding page,
                              an integration guide, and an account-manager
                              page (create/login/recover, password rotation,
                              identity export).

Quick start

npm install                       # installs all three workspaces
npm test                          # runs @bitlogin/core's test suite (vitest)
npm run build                     # builds core, then widget
npm run dev:demo                  # assembles + serves the demo at :4173

@bitlogin/demo's npm run build copies the built widget into packages/demo/dist/vendor/bitlogin/ alongside the static HTML — the result in packages/demo/dist/ is a complete, ready-to-host static site.

Embedding BitLogin in your own static site

<script type="module" src="/vendor/bitlogin/bitlogin.js"></script>
<bitlogin-auth
  vault-relays="wss://relay-one.example,wss://relay-two.example,wss://relay-three.example"
  discovery-relays="wss://discovery-one.example,wss://discovery-two.example">
</bitlogin-auth>

bitlogin.js and cryptoWorker.js (plus the shared chunk they both import) must be deployed side by side — the main script resolves the worker's URL at runtime relative to its own location, so this works from any path, not just the site root.

Once a user signs in, window.nostr is installed with the de facto NIP-07 shape (getPublicKey, signEvent, getRelays, nip44.encrypt/decrypt), so existing Nostr web apps work against it unmodified. Private keys never leave the worker; the main thread only ever sees public keys, signed events, and ciphertext. See packages/demo/public/docs.html for the full integration guide, and packages/demo/public/account.html for a working example (create → confirm recovery phrase → sign an event → rotate password → export identity).

Deployment

The demo site deploys to Vercel: vercel.json at the repo root sets the build command (core → widget → demo) and output directory, so importing this repo at vercel.com/new needs no manual configuration. GitHub Pages was evaluated but dropped — Pages requires a paid plan for private repositories, whereas Vercel's free tier deploys a private repo without that restriction.

Because the deployed demo serves the built widget files as plain static assets at /vendor/bitlogin/, any other site can point directly at the Vercel deployment today without installing anything locally:

<script type="module" src="https://bitlogin.vercel.app/vendor/bitlogin/bitlogin.js"></script>
<bitlogin-auth></bitlogin-auth>

This is fine for prototyping across multiple projects; for production use in someone else's app, self-hosting the built files (or a future published npm package / CDN release) avoids depending on this demo deployment's uptime.

What's implemented

This build covers the protocol's Phase 0 (cryptographic core + test vectors) and the load-bearing parts of Phase 1 (account MVP), verified two ways:

• Protocol-level tests (npm test, 49 tests): Argon2id/ScalarExpand/JCS/ padding/timestamp unit tests with the spec's exact byte layouts (§11), and full end-to-end scenarios — create → clean-device login, phrase recovery → new credentials → clean-device login, password change with mandatory tombstone + NIP-09 deletion, relay-loss → replica repair (including keyless recovery-event rebroadcast), rollback-warning and relay-disagreement detection — run against an in-memory mock relay (packages/core/src/test-support/mockRelay.ts), since this sandbox has no route to public Nostr relays.
• Real-browser verification: the same flows were driven end-to-end in actual Chromium against the built widget, confirming the crypto worker, IndexedDB storage, and window.nostr provider work together outside the test harness.

Implemented: registration (§15), any-device password login with rollback and relay-disagreement detection (§16), phrase recovery with recovery-capsule refresh (§17), known-password change with mandatory tombstone + NIP-09 deletion (§18), replica repair (§24.4), recovery export (§19.5), NIP-19 nsec/npub encoding, importing an existing Nostr nsec as the everyday identity (§28.1, §SF10 — with a preview-before-commit UI step), a NIP-44 v2 implementation for the window.nostr.nip44 surface, bootstrap/discovery relay list plumbing (§19), and the full crypto stack from §11 (Argon2id, HKDF, ScalarExpand, AES-256-GCM, JCS, fixed padding buckets).

Deferred / not in this pass:

• Phase 2 messaging (NIP-17 inbox/compose) — the NIP-44 primitive is built and tested, but no conversation UI is wired up.
• Phase 3 application redirect-auth flow (§26.3) and NIP-46/NIP-07 browser extension interop beyond the window.nostr shim.
• NIP-49 ncryptsec export (§28.2) — deliberately left out rather than shipped unverified against official test vectors; plain nsec/npub (NIP-19) export is implemented instead.
• The maintainer-signed bootstrap relay-list channel (§19.1) has the verify/merge logic implemented but ships with a placeholder maintainer public key — a real deployment needs to swap in a real one.
• Native clients, hardware-backed recovery, independent second implementation, and formal security audit (Phase 4).

Development notes

• Crypto primitives use audited libraries: @noble/curves (secp256k1 Schnorr), @noble/hashes (SHA-256, HKDF, HMAC), @noble/ciphers (ChaCha20 for NIP-44), @scure/bip39 (BIP-39), native WebCrypto (AES-256-GCM), and hash-wasm (Argon2id).
• The Argon2id profile (bitlogin-argon2id-v1) uses parallelism 1 rather than RFC 9106's recommended 4, for reasons documented in packages/core/src/crypto/argon2id.ts (§11.2 of the spec).
• Passphrases are generated from the EFF long Diceware wordlist (diceware-wordlist-en-eff), matching the spec's ~12.9-bits/word, six-word/~77-bit default (§9.2).