Solun

Minimal, secure text sharing. Share sensitive text with end-to-end encryption or fast encrypted-at-rest quick pastes — all ephemeral by default.

Solun is available as a hosted service and as open-source software under the MIT License.

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How it works

Mode	Encryption	Burn after read
Quick	AES-256-GCM, server-side key	Always (server-enforced)
Secure	AES-256-GCM, key never leaves your browser	Optional

• Quick pastes are encrypted at rest and deleted after the first read. The server decrypts on delivery — fast and zero-effort for the sender.
• Secure pastes are end-to-end encrypted in the browser before being sent. The decryption key is embedded in the URL fragment and never transmitted to the server.

Files from the command line

Quick files can be shared and fetched with plain curl — handy for headless servers:

# Upload (expiresIn: 1h | 24h | 7d) — the response contains the share "url"
curl -F expiresIn=24h -F file=@backup.tar.gz https://<api-host>/api/files/quick

# Download on the server: follows the redirect, keeps the original filename
curl -fLOJ https://solun.pm/f/<id>
# or: wget --content-disposition https://solun.pm/f/<id>

The download burns the file (Quick files are one-shot), and it counts as used as soon as the transfer starts. HEAD requests never burn it. Secure files cannot be fetched this way: their key only exists in the link's #key= fragment, which the server never sees.

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Self-hosting with Docker

The fastest way to run Solun yourself.

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/your-org/solun.git
cd solun

2. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env and set a strong ENCRYPTION_SECRET:

# Generate a secure secret:
node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('hex'))"

3. Start

docker compose up -d

The app is available at http://localhost:3000.

Stop

docker compose down

To also remove the database volume:

docker compose down -v

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Development setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• pnpm 9+
• Docker (for PostgreSQL)

1. Install dependencies

pnpm install

2. Configure environment

apps/api/.env:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/solun
PORT=3001
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:3000
ENCRYPTION_SECRET=<random string, min 32 characters>

apps/web/.env.local:

NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:3001

3. Start PostgreSQL

docker compose up postgres -d

4. Set up the database

pnpm --filter @solun/shared build
pnpm --filter @solun/api exec prisma generate
pnpm --filter @solun/api exec prisma db push

5. Run in development mode

Open two terminals:

# Terminal 1
pnpm --filter @solun/api dev

# Terminal 2
pnpm --filter @solun/web dev

App runs at http://localhost:3000.

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Stack

• Monorepo: pnpm workspaces + Turbo
• API: Node.js · Express · Prisma · PostgreSQL
• Web: Next.js 16 · React 19 · Tailwind CSS
• Encryption: AES-256-GCM (Web Crypto API for E2E, Node crypto for at-rest)

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Security notes

• The ENCRYPTION_SECRET must stay constant — changing it makes existing quick-paste content permanently unreadable.
• Secure paste keys are only ever stored in the URL fragment (#key=…) and never sent to the server.
• Quick pastes are always burn-after-read; there is no way to read them twice.

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Releasing

Bump the version across all packages, create a commit and a Git tag, then push:

# Stable release
pnpm release:patch   # 0.0.1 → 0.0.2
pnpm release:minor   # 0.0.1 → 0.1.0
pnpm release:major   # 0.0.1 → 1.0.0
git push origin main --tags

# Dev pre-release
pnpm release:patch:dev   # 0.0.1 → 0.0.2-dev.1
pnpm release:minor:dev   # 0.0.1 → 0.1.0-dev.1
pnpm release:major:dev   # 0.0.1 → 1.0.0-dev.1
git push origin dev --tags

Pushing a tag triggers the publish workflow which builds and pushes the Docker images to GHCR:

• Stable tags → ghcr.io/solun-pm/solun-api:x.y.z + :latest
• Dev tags → ghcr.io/solun-pm/solun-api:x.y.z-dev.1 + :dev

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License

MIT