Installation

kovra is two pieces:

kovra — the Rust CLI and the local vault (this is the core tool).
kovra-mcp — an optional Python package that exposes kovra to AI agents over MCP. You only need it to use kovra from Claude Code (or another MCP client).

Install the CLI

Download kovra for macOS (.dmg), open it, and drag kovra.app into Applications. On first launch, right-click the app → Open (the build isn’t notarized yet, so macOS Gatekeeper asks once). The app sets up its own vault on first run — no extra setup. The kovra CLI ships inside the app.

Windows is in Beta. Download the kovra installer (.msi) and run it. The installer isn’t signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may warn once — choose More info → Run anyway. It installs the kovra CLI and puts it on your PATH.

The MCP server is available now on PyPI.

Install the MCP server (optional)

The MCP server lets an AI agent see scoped metadata and run commands through kovra’s wrapper, without ever receiving the plaintext of your sensitive secrets. It ships as the kovra-mcp Python package and provides a kovra-mcp command.

pip install kovra-mcp
# or, isolated on your PATH:
pipx install kovra-mcp     # or: uv tool install kovra-mcp

You normally don’t run kovra-mcp by hand — it’s an MCP stdio server that your agent launches. kovra setup registers it for your project. Just confirm it’s on your PATH:

macOS
Windows

~ % which kovra-mcp
/Users/you/.local/bin/kovra-mcp

PS> where.exe kovra-mcp
C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Scripts\kovra-mcp.exe

Head to the Quick start to initialize your vault, store your first secret, and inject it into a process.

Installation

Install the CLI

Install the MCP server (optional)

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