The words, explained.
Encryption hides behind a wall of jargon. Here's the small set of terms AgePony actually uses, each in a sentence or two, with a fuller page behind it if you want the depth.
The age format 5
age
The simple, modern file-encryption format AgePony is built on.
X25519
The elliptic-curve key exchange age uses to seal a file to a recipient.
ChaCha20-Poly1305
The authenticated cipher that actually encrypts the bytes.
scrypt
The memory-hard function behind passphrase mode.
ASCII armor
Encoding a binary .age file as copy-pasteable text.
Keys and identities 8
Identity
The secret half of a keypair — what decrypts files sent to you.
Recipient
The public half — what others encrypt to.
Public vs private key
The asymmetric pair that makes all of this work.
ssh-ed25519
An SSH key you can reuse directly as an age recipient.
SSH-key encryption
How age encrypts to an existing SSH public key.
Secure Enclave
The hardware vault where a non-exportable key can live.
Key rotation
Retiring one identity and moving to a fresh one, safely.
age plugin
How age extends to hardware tokens and other backends.
Signing 3
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