Qira Notify — encrypted notifications only you can read

👋 You were invited to a topic

Someone shared the topic with you. Enter the phrase they told you in the Subscribe card below and click Start watching — messages decrypt in your browser, never on the server.

🚀 Try the live demo

A server-side auto-publisher encrypts a random message every 2 minutes and posts it to a public topic. Click below to subscribe and watch messages arrive — decrypted locally by your browser with a public demo phrase. Enable Android push after subscribing to feel a notification every 2 minutes.

What's "public" about the demo phrase?

The demo topic is qira-demo-feed and the demo phrase is qira demo feed public heartbeat 2026. Both are printed here in plain text on purpose — anyone who loads this page can subscribe. A real topic uses a phrase you tell someone in person; the server still can't read plaintext because the crypto runs in your browser.

Publish

Topic URL segment

Message

Phrase (shared out-of-band)

What the server actually sees

The server sees: the topic URL, a timestamp, a random message ID, and an opaque ciphertext blob. It does not see the message content, the phrase, or anything derived from them. Argon2id stretches the phrase with ~100 MiB of memory and 4 rounds before deriving the AEAD key; brute-forcing a single-password-protected vault is prohibitively expensive if your phrase is strong.

Subscribe

Topic URL segment

Phrase (to decrypt)

Remember phrase on this device (stored in browser localStorage, origin-scoped)

👥 Share this topic with a group

Copy the block below and paste it in your group chat / email / in person. The phrase must be shared separately (not in the link) — otherwise anyone who sees the link gets the phrase too.

Why not put the phrase in the URL?

Anything in the URL shows up in browser history, server logs (if the recipient doesn't open over HTTPS), and screenshot previews. The phrase goes in a separate channel — ideally in person, or over a channel the recipient already trusts. The URL alone lets someone send messages to the topic; only the phrase lets them read messages.

Inbox

Tap Show raw ciphertext ▸ on any message to see the actual JSON envelope the server stored. The bytes you see there are what the relay operator (us) sees — nothing more.

Start watching a topic above to see messages here.

🛠️ Decrypt this anywhere (no special tool required)

Each message is a self-contained QIRA-NOTIFY-V1 envelope: Argon2id-derived wrap key + XChaCha20-Poly1305 for the payload. Three ways to unlock any envelope you copied above:

In this browser — already happens above when you watch a topic with the phrase entered.
On the Vault page — open /vault/, scroll to Step 1 — the vault file, paste the JSON into the text box, type the phrase, click Open it!. Works for any Notify JSON on any device with a browser.
Offline with Python — ~30 lines + pynacl, shown below. Same math, same result, no server contact at all.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# pip install pynacl
import base64, json, sys
from nacl.pwhash import argon2id
from nacl.bindings import (
    crypto_aead_xchacha20poly1305_ietf_decrypt as aead_decrypt,
    crypto_aead_xchacha20poly1305_ietf_KEYBYTES,
)

def b64ud(s):
    s += "=" * (-len(s) % 4)
    return base64.urlsafe_b64decode(s)

env = json.load(sys.stdin)
phrase = input("phrase: ").encode()

salt = b64ud(env["kdf"]["salt"])
wrap_key = argon2id.kdf(
    crypto_aead_xchacha20poly1305_ietf_KEYBYTES, phrase, salt,
    opslimit=env["kdf"]["opslimit"], memlimit=env["kdf"]["memlimit"],
)
vault_key = aead_decrypt(
    b64ud(env["wrap"]["wrapped_key"]),
    env["wrap"]["aad"].encode(),
    b64ud(env["wrap"]["nonce"]),
    wrap_key,
)
plain = aead_decrypt(
    b64ud(env["content"]["ciphertext"]),
    env["content"]["aad"].encode(),
    b64ud(env["content"]["nonce"]),
    vault_key,
)
print(plain.decode())

Run: python decrypt.py < envelope.json, paste the phrase. If you can decrypt offline, you've proven the server is dispensable — the crypto stands on its own.