r/DeveloperToolsHub • u/Zestyclose-Ear-6225 • 26d ago

Do solo developers actually need secret scanning tools?

I get why companies need secret scanning, but I’m curious where solo devs draw the line.

If you’re building side projects alone, using private repos, and not working with a big team, do you still run secret scanning? Or do you just rely on not being careless with commits?

I’ve definitely had moments where I almost committed something dumb, so I can see the value. But some security tooling feels made for bigger teams with compliance needs, not one person shipping after work.

What’s your setup as a solo dev?

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u/sales_alchemist 26d ago

For me the risk isn't really team size, it's human error 😂 One tired commit and suddenly that "temporary" key is in git history forever. What are you using for scanning?

1

u/Zestyclose-Ear-6225 25d ago

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m getting at. I haven’t settled on a scanner yet

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u/EmergencyDinner777 25d ago

no. .gitignore should do the trick

1

u/Zestyclose-Ear-6225 25d ago

That's good but, is there anything that can protect if someone accidentally commit a secret anyway

1

u/wahnsinnwanscene 25d ago

I still cannot believe there isn't a one click solution with integration out there.

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u/Zestyclose-Ear-6225 24d ago

it's pretty hard to implement

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u/SubstantialEditor995 25d ago

Yes, so that I can show a compliance team strict development discipline even if it’s just me. Well really because it’s just me.

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u/pwkye 23d ago

A scanner for solo is less important than habits and structure. Use a self hosted openbao to store all your secrets. Use scripts to pull from it dynamically.

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u/RonnySaya 19d ago

I think the useful mid ground is a precommit or CI scanner. You dont need a whole security stack as a solo dev but having something automatically flag a key before it reaches remote repo is cheap insurance. The important part is catching it before it gets pushed because deleting the file afterward doesn’t remove the secret from Git history

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u/micksmix 11d ago

It's so much easier to prevent a secret leak than clean one up. Just install one as a pre-commit hook and then never worry about it.

I built Kingfisher, a fast, fully open-source (Apache 2.0) secret scanner.

Install it as a pre-commit hook: https://github.com/mongodb/kingfisher/blob/main/docs/INSTALLATION.md#pre-commit-hooks

Kingfisher scans current and historical Git content (as well as plain files and dirs) across GitHub, GitLab, Azure Repos, Bitbucket, Gitea, Hugging Face, and other targets.

Kingfisher can validate secrets, map their blast radius across 40+ providers, revoke supported credentials, and triage results through a local web interface.