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Open Coworking Stack

HashiCorp Vault coworking evaluation stub

This is an incomplete evaluation stub, not an implementation guide.

Verified snapshot

HashiCorp Vault manages application secrets, keys, and dynamic credentials. It is source-available under Business Source License 1.1, not OSI open source; OpenBao is a separate community option. Vault may be self-hosted or managed and holds secrets, auth methods, audit logs, and personal data.

Sources reviewed 2026-07-17: homepage, repository, documentation, and pricing.

Evaluation questions

  • Is Vault justified after basic staff password-manager hygiene exists?
  • Do BSL and commercial terms fit the exact use?
  • Who owns initialization/unseal, policies, audit, HA, upgrades, and disaster recovery?
  • How can applications move to another secrets system without outage or exposure?

Smallest experiment

Only after password-manager basics exist, prototype synthetic KV secrets for staging apps. Test least privilege, revocation, outage behavior, license fit, and clean recovery.

Risks

  • Expert operational complexity and central-secret outage
  • BSL/enterprise feature and pricing boundaries
  • Key ceremony, audit data, migration, and recovery failure

TODO before a full guide

  • Complete license and architecture review
  • Threat-model keys, storage, policies, auth, audit, and clients
  • Test backup/restore, revocation, outage, and secure migration
  • Define break-glass ownership and OpenBao/other exit comparison