nostr-bray

Sovereign Nostr identities for AI agents

An MCP server that gives AI agents a full Nostr identity — not just a key pair, but a hierarchical identity tree with personas, attestations, ring signatures, encrypted DMs, and duress detection. 77 tools across 10 groups.

The Problem

AI agents interacting with Nostr today are handed a single key pair with no separation of concerns. One compromised session leaks everything. There is no way to rotate keys, prove identity links, or maintain separate personas for different contexts.

nostr-bray solves this with nsec-tree hierarchical derivation. A single master secret generates unlimited child identities, each with its own key pair, purpose, and relay set. Private keys are zeroed from memory on eviction. Agents can switch personas mid-conversation, prove they control the master without revealing the derivation path, and activate a duress identity if compromised.

How It Works

Every tool operates as the "active identity." Derive a persona, switch to it, and everything you do is signed by that persona's key — cryptographically unlinkable to the master unless you publish a proof.

identity-derive-persona("work")    → npub1abc...
identity-switch("work")            → now operating as work persona
social-post("Hello from work!")    → signed by npub1abc...
identity-switch("master")          → back to master
social-post("Back to main")       → signed by master npub

This is not just key management — it is context isolation. Each persona has its own relay set, its own contact list, and its own attestation chain. Compromise one and the others remain intact.

Comparison

Quick Start — CLI

# Post a note to Nostr from your terminal
export NOSTR_SECRET_KEY="nsec1..."
export NOSTR_RELAYS="wss://relay.damus.io,wss://nos.lol"

npx nostr-bray whoami                    # show your npub
npx nostr-bray post "hello from bray!"   # publish a note
npx nostr-bray persona work              # derive a work persona
npx nostr-bray prove blind               # create a linkage proof
npx nostr-bray --help                    # see all commands

Quick Start — MCP Server

Add to your Claude/Cursor/Windsurf MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nostr": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["nostr-bray"],
      "env": {
        "NOSTR_SECRET_KEY": "nsec1...",
        "NOSTR_RELAYS": "wss://relay.damus.io,wss://nos.lol"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with a secret file (recommended):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nostr": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["nostr-bray"],
      "env": {
        "NOSTR_SECRET_KEY_FILE": "/path/to/secret.key",
        "NOSTR_RELAYS": "wss://relay.damus.io,wss://nos.lol"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tool Groups

Identity (12 tools) — create, derive, switch, prove, backup, and migrate Nostr identities

Social (14 tools) — post, reply, react, DM, follow, and read feeds

Trust (11 tools) — attestations, ring signatures, linkage proofs, spoken verification

Relay (5 tools) — per-identity relay lists, NIP-65 management, direct queries

Zap (7 tools) — Lightning payments and invoices via Nostr Wallet Connect

Safety (2 tools) — duress personas for coercion resistance

Blossom (3 tools) — media uploads and management

Groups — NIP-29 (4 tools) — group chat, metadata, and membership

Community NIPs (2 tools) — publish and read community-proposed NIPs

Utility (18 tools) — encode, decode, encrypt, verify, filter, fetch, browse NIPs

Configuration

Documentation

• Usage Guide — walkthroughs for identity management, DMs, attestations, NWC payments, Tor, and duress
• Examples — MCP config files (basic, NWC, Tor) and a CLI workflow script
• Contributing — setup, architecture, testing, and conventions

For AI Assistants

See llms.txt for a concise summary optimised for AI context windows, or llms-full.txt for complete tool documentation with parameter details.

Licence

MIT