Nostr‑KeyGen

A tiny, interactive command‑line tool that lets you generate a Nostr key pair from any file you choose. It works on macOS, Linux and (with a few tweaks) Windows. The script is intentionally lightweight – no fancy GUI, just an easy‑to‑follow wizard run from your terminal.

Features

Drag‑and‑drop friendly: on macOS and Linux you can simply drop the file into the Terminal window.
Clear, step‑by‑step tutorial: every run prints a short intro, an explanation, a quick demo, asks for your file and finishes with the key‑pair in both Nostr‑Bech32 and raw hex.
No external binaries – it just uses the pure‑Python ecdsa and bech32 packages.
Portable: you can ship it as a single Python file or compile to a binary with tools such as PyInstaller.

Install

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/btcforplebs/nostr-keygen.git
cd nostr-keygen

2. Create and activate a virtual environment

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

3. Install dependencies

pip install ecdsa bech32

4. Make it executable and optional symlink

chmod +x nostr-keygen

Usage

Run the script directly from the project directory:

./nostr-keygen

You’ll be guided through the following steps:

Welcome screen – press Enter to continue.
Tool overview – press Enter to continue.
Demo key generation using a temporary file – press Enter to continue.
Prompt for the path to your entropy file. You can drop a file into the terminal on macOS/Linux or type the absolute/relative path.
The script shows you the generated nsec, npub, and the hex representation of both keys.
Press Enter again, the terminal is cleared and the program exits.

Example Output

🛠️  Welcome to Nostr‑KeyGen

This tool will:
- Pick any file as your entropy source
- Hash the file → 32‑byte seed
- Derive a secp256k1 key pair
- Print the Nostr `nsec`/`npub` and the raw hex values

💡 Demo (using a random file in /tmp)...
  Demo nsec: nsec1q4...
  Demo npub: npub1p8...
  Demo priv hex: 1f4c...
  Demo pub hex: 03a1...

📂 Enter the path to your entropy file: /Users/me/secret.txt

✅  Your new key pair:
    - nsec : nsec1q8...
    - npub : npub1p9...
    - priv hex : 7c2d...
    - pub hex  : 029b...

🧹 Cleaning up...
🚀 Done. Goodbye!

FAQs

Question	Answer
Why does it read any file as entropy?	Nostr requires a 32‑byte seed. Hashing a file guarantees a deterministic, pseudo‑random 32‑byte output irrespective of the file size or content.
Will it always produce the same key for the same file?	Yes – the seed is derived from a SHA‑256 hash of the file contents.
Can I use a password instead?	The current script accepts files only, but you could easily pipe a password string using `echo -n 'mypassword' > pwd.txt` first.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome! Just make sure the code passes flake8/black and contains an updated README.

License

MIT – see LICENSE.

README.md Unescape Escape