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

Homebrew (recommended)

macOS
Windows

~ % brew install kaeus-inc/kovra/kovra

This installs the kovra binary and puts it on your PATH. Verify it:

macOS
Windows

~ % kovra --version
kovra 0.8.0

crates.io

Any platform with a Rust toolchain can install the CLI straight from crates.io — no tap required:

~ % cargo install kovra

This builds and installs the kovra binary into ~/.cargo/bin.

From source

You need a recent Rust toolchain (kovra targets the 2024 edition). Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/kaeus-inc/kovra-core.git
cd kovra-core

Then build the release binary:

macOS
Windows

~/kovra-core % cargo build --release
   Compiling kovra-core v0.8.0 (…/kovra-core/crates/core)
   Compiling kovra v0.8.0 (…/kovra-core/crates/cli)
    Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 1m 47s

The kovra binary lands in target/release/kovra. Copy it somewhere on your PATH:

cp target/release/kovra /usr/local/bin/

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

Windows — coming soon. Use where.exe kovra-mcp once Windows packages ship.

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