Encrypted collections

Mark a collection as encrypted and its records are ciphertext on disk at all times, decrypted only in memory by Intabula itself. The agent, other apps, and whatever the folder syncs to see only encrypted bytes.

How it works

Records are encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a per-collection master key. That key is wrapped by a key derived from your password (scrypt); the password itself is never stored, and neither is anything it could be recovered from. Changing the password rewraps the master key in place — no record file is touched.

You can encrypt a collection when you create it, or later from its collection settings. Encrypting an existing collection rewrites its records to ciphertext; removing encryption restores plaintext.

Unlocking

Unlock is per session: enter the password once and the collection opens normally in the app. It locks again on quit, after a period of idle, or when you lock it yourself. While locked, records show as locked stubs — you can see that they exist, not what they say.

What the agent sees

Nothing. The refusal is structural, not behavioral: every vault operation checks the path and refuses encrypted collections, for every provider, whether or not the collection is currently unlocked. The full-text index stores only stub rows for encrypted records, so search cannot leak their content either. Encrypted records never reach the model as context.

What stays visible

Encryption covers a record's fields and body. Filenames (and therefore slugs), the number of records, file sizes, and modification times remain visible on disk — Intabula states this when you encrypt. If a record's name is itself sensitive, give the file a neutral name.

Sync and other apps

Encrypted records are ordinary files that happen to hold ciphertext, so they sync like everything else — iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Git all carry them without knowing what's inside. Other apps opening the same folder, Obsidian included, see unreadable content; edit encrypted records only in Intabula.

No password recovery

There is no recovery, by design: no account, no server, no escrow — nothing exists that could reset the password. If you lose it, the records stay ciphertext. Treat the password like the key it is.

Where to go next