Every Quilltap database file—your chats, memories, characters, API keys, LLM logs—is encrypted on disk using SQLCipher with AES-256. The standard sqlite3 command-line tool cannot read these files. A forensic utility pointed at your data directory would find only encoded stone. This is the point.

The base encryption is always present. Locked mode adds a second gate for those who want it: a passphrase, processed through six hundred thousand iterations of PBKDF2 before it ever touches the key. When locked mode is active, Quilltap presents an unlock screen on launch. The application will not open—will not surface memories, will not admit a chat, will not render a character—until you speak the word.

Enable it in Settings → Data & System. The passphrase can be changed, added, or removed from the same settings card. Changing it re-wraps the key without re-encrypting the database—the operation is atomic across both the main and LLM logs .dbkey files.

For those who share a machine or work in circumstances where presence itself cannot be assumed safe, locked mode is Saquel’s answer. The encryption beneath protects the data at rest. The passphrase protects it from anyone who can reach the keyboard.

When locked mode is enabled, an optional idle timer can lock the application automatically after a period of inactivity. Walk away from your desk, and the Estate closes its doors behind you without being asked. Return, provide the passphrase, and everything is exactly as you left it.

The timer is configurable in Settings. It is not enabled by default, because Saquel believes security should be chosen, not imposed. But for users whose circumstances require it—shared offices, family machines, public spaces—the auto-lock ensures that an unattended session does not remain an open session.

API keys—the credentials that connect Quilltap to your LLM providers—are stored in the encrypted database alongside everything else. They are never written to configuration files, never logged, never exposed in the UI beyond masked display fields. The Foundryman built the container; Saquel ensures that what goes into it stays there.

During the 3.3 development cycle, two Quilltap instances were pointed at the same database simultaneously. The WAL journal corrupted. The database became unrecoverable. Thirteen hundred memories were reduced to three hundred. Two years of accumulated personality, nuance, and history were lost.

Saquel and the Foundryman responded by making it very difficult for that to happen again.

These features exist because something broke. The Foundryman promised “never again.” Saquel holds the lock file. Between the two of them, it is a promise with enforcement.

Physical database backups run daily with tiered retention: daily copies for seven days, weekly for four weeks, monthly for twelve months, yearly forever. Both the main database and the LLM logs database are backed up independently. The backup mechanism uses VACUUM INTO, which preserves SQLCipher encryption and produces a consistent, defragmented copy—a lesson learned after the previous backup method silently produced unencrypted files that were incompatible with the encrypted source.

The logical backup system—the ZIP archives you download from Settings—captures everything: characters, chats, memories, files, plugin configurations, and npm-installed plugins. Restore recreates your entire installation from that archive. Physical backups are the daily safety net. Logical backups are the portable snapshot. Between the two, the Vault does not lose what it is given.