Initial design: async single-retrieval encrypted file drop

README covers the pitch and how this differs from flit (synchronous,
zero server storage) and zipline (persistent hosting). IMPLEMENTATION
covers the crypto scheme (key-in-fragment, same primitives as
flit/waste-go), storage shape, and the deletion-race problem —
delete-on-first-byte-served is the wrong default (see Firefox Send's
history with this exact bug); confirm-then-delete with a TTL backstop
is the fix.

No code yet — design stage.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

IMPLEMENTATION.md

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+# wisp — implementation notes
+
+Design-stage document. Nothing here is built yet; this is the spec to build
+against, not a description of existing code.
+
+## Threat model
+
+- The server operator can be assumed hostile-but-honest: they might try to
+  read stored files, but the design should make that cryptographically
+  impossible, not just policy-forbidden.
+- The server **can** see: upload/download timing, file size (ciphertext
+  length), IP addresses of uploader/downloader, and that a given blob id
+  was retrieved. It **cannot** see: filename, file contents, or the
+  encryption key.
+- Not defended against: a malicious *recipient* who screenshots or
+  re-uploads the file elsewhere after decrypting it. Nothing can defend
+  against that — it's out of scope, same as it is for flit.
+- Not defended against: a network observer between sender and the person
+  they share the link with (e.g. if the link is sent over an insecure
+  channel). The link itself is the credential; treat it like a password.
+
+## Crypto scheme
+
+- Client generates a random symmetric key (32 bytes, libsodium
+  `crypto_secretbox` or `crypto_aead_xchacha20poly1305_ietf` — same
+  primitives already used across flit/waste-go, no new crypto library to
+  vet).
+- File is encrypted client-side before any network request. For files
+  larger than a single-shot encrypt is comfortable with in a browser tab
+  (say, >50MB), chunk into fixed-size blocks, each sealed independently
+  with a per-chunk nonce derived from a chunk index — avoids holding the
+  whole plaintext or ciphertext in memory at once. (flit already solved
+  streamed chunked transfer over DataChannels; the chunking logic is
+  reusable even though the transport here is HTTP upload, not WebRTC.)
+- The key is placed in the URL fragment: `https://wisp.example/d/<blob-id>#k=<key-b64>`.
+  Fragments are never sent to the server in an HTTP request — this is the
+  same trick Firefox Send and PrivateBin used, and it's the load-bearing
+  property that makes "server never sees plaintext, ever" actually true
+  rather than just a policy.
+- `blob-id` is a random, unguessable identifier (128-bit, base62), separate
+  from the key. Knowing the id alone (e.g. from server logs) does not grant
+  access to the file — you need the fragment too, which never reaches the
+  server.
+
+## Storage
+
+- Ciphertext blobs on local disk, one file per upload, named by `blob-id`.
+- Metadata in SQLite (matches the `npm-statuspage`/general project
+  convention — small, file-based, no separate DB server to run):
+
+  ```sql
+  CREATE TABLE drops (
+    id            TEXT PRIMARY KEY,       -- blob-id, 128-bit base62
+    size_bytes    INTEGER NOT NULL,
+    created_at    INTEGER NOT NULL,       -- unix seconds
+    expires_at    INTEGER NOT NULL,       -- created_at + TTL
+    downloaded_at INTEGER,                -- set once, on confirmed decrypt
+    burned        INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0  -- 1 once deleted
+  );
+  ```
+
+- No filename, no content-type, nothing plaintext-adjacent stored server
+  side. If the client wants to preserve a filename across the transfer, it
+  goes *inside* the encrypted payload (e.g. a small JSON header before the
+  file bytes, encrypted along with everything else), not in the database.
+
+## The deletion race — why "delete on first byte served" is wrong
+
+The naive version: server deletes the blob as soon as the download request
+starts (or completes, from the server's own point of view). Two failure
+modes:
+
+1. **Network drops mid-download.** The recipient's connection dies at 80%.
+   The server already considers the file "served" and deletes it. The
+   recipient has an unrecoverable partial file and no way to retry — the
+   link is now dead. This is the exact bug that made Firefox Send
+   frustrating in practice.
+2. **Decrypt fails client-side** (corrupted download, browser crash mid-
+   decrypt, wrong key from a mistyped/truncated link). Same outcome: file
+   is gone from the server, but the recipient never actually got it.
+
+**The fix**: the server serves the blob but does not delete it yet. The
+*client* decrypts and verifies (the AEAD tag on the ciphertext gives you
+integrity for free — if decrypt succeeds, the bytes are correct). Only on
+successful decrypt does the client send a short authenticated "confirm"
+request back to the server:
+
+```
+POST /api/drops/<blob-id>/confirm
+Authorization: Bearer <confirm-token>   -- returned alongside the download, single-use
+```
+
+The confirm-token is issued at download time, tied to that specific
+download attempt, and single-use — so a network observer who sees the
+download request can't independently trigger deletion without also having
+successfully completed (or at least intercepted) the actual file transfer.
+On confirm, the server deletes the blob and disk file, sets `burned = 1`.
+
+If confirm never arrives (dropped connection, closed tab, whatever), the
+blob **stays available for retry** — the recipient can just reload the
+link and try again — right up until the TTL backstop expires it anyway.
+This trades "guaranteed single-view" for "no silent unrecoverable
+failures," which is the right tradeoff: the TTL already bounds how long a
+never-confirmed file survives, so the failure mode of "someone could
+technically re-download before confirming" is bounded in time and no worse
+than a slightly-too-generous TTL.
+
+## TTL and cleanup
+
+- Default TTL: configurable, a few days seems reasonable for "someone else
+  needs to get around to opening this."
+- A cron/interval job (same pattern as `npm-statuspage`'s scheduled checks)
+  sweeps `drops` where `expires_at < now AND burned = 0`, deletes the disk
+  file, marks burned.
+- Rows are kept after burning (not hard-deleted from SQLite) for basic
+  abuse/debugging visibility, pruned separately on a much longer schedule.
+
+## API surface (sketch)
+
+```
+POST   /api/drops                 -- multipart or raw body upload; returns { id, ttl }
+GET    /api/drops/:id              -- streams ciphertext; issues a confirm-token
+POST   /api/drops/:id/confirm      -- single-use, triggers deletion
+```
+
+No auth on upload initially (matches flit/waste-go's "no accounts" ethos),
+but needs abuse guardrails since — unlike flit — this one actually costs
+disk space per upload:
+
+- Max file size cap (needs a number; start conservative, e.g. a few hundred
+  MB, revisit based on actual use).
+- Per-IP rate limit on uploads.
+- Maybe: require the uploader to have a known waste-go/flit identity
+  (Ed25519 pubkey signs the upload request) to unlock a larger size limit
+  or bypass rate limits — reuses identity infra that already exists rather
+  than building new auth. Optional, not required for v1.
+
+## Open questions
+
+- Exact TTL default and max file size — pick numbers once there's a rough
+  sense of real usage, not before.
+- Whether to support multi-recipient (same link retrievable by N people
+  before burning) — v1 should be strictly single-retrieval; multi-retrieval
+  is a distinct feature with different deletion semantics, not a variant.
+- Whether filename/content-type belongs inside the encrypted envelope
+  (current lean: yes) or should be a separate unencrypted-but-harmless
+  field — leaning toward "inside," since even a filename can leak
+  information the sender didn't intend to share with the server operator.

README.md

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+# wisp
+
+Short-lived, end-to-end encrypted file sharing. Send a file to someone who
+isn't online right now — they get a link, they get the file once, and then
+it's gone. The server never has the ability to read what it's holding.
+
+## Why
+
+`flit` already does encrypted file transfer between devices, but it's
+synchronous — both sides have to be online at the same time for the WebRTC
+handshake. That's fine for "send this to my other laptop right now," and
+wrong for "here's a file for you, grab it whenever."
+
+wisp is the asynchronous counterpart: upload once, the recipient retrieves
+later, on their own schedule. That async gap is the one thing flit's
+architecture (zero server storage, direct P2P) structurally can't do — it
+requires the server to actually hold ciphertext for a while, which is new
+territory for this project family, not a variant of something already built.
+
+## What it isn't
+
+- **Not zipline.** Zipline is persistent link/screenshot hosting — you keep
+  the URL, the file stays. wisp is the opposite: single retrieval, then the
+  file is unrecoverable, by design.
+- **Not flit.** Flit needs both peers online simultaneously and never stores
+  anything server-side. wisp is deliberately async and requires temporary
+  server-side ciphertext storage.
+
+## Core model
+
+1. Sender encrypts the file client-side (symmetric, libsodium secretbox —
+   same primitive flit's browser client already uses).
+2. Ciphertext uploads to the server. The encryption key never leaves the
+   sender's browser except inside the URL fragment (`#key=...`), which
+   browsers never transmit in HTTP requests. The server only ever sees
+   opaque bytes.
+3. Sender shares the link through any channel they like.
+4. Recipient opens the link, downloads the ciphertext, decrypts client-side.
+5. On successful decrypt, the client sends a short confirmation to the
+   server. Only then does the server delete the blob.
+6. A TTL (default: a few days) is the backstop for links nobody ever opens,
+   so nothing sits on disk forever.
+
+Full design, including why "delete on first byte served" is the wrong
+default, is in [IMPLEMENTATION.md](./IMPLEMENTATION.md).
+
+## Status
+
+Design only. No code yet.