Ente is an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos, offering privacy-friendly photo backup across Android, iOS, web, and desktop. It uses libsodium for cryptography and replicates data to two EU storage providers. The project has open-sourced its clients and has gained significant attention on Hacker News and Reddit.
A starter prompt for Claude Code, what you'll need, and how to reach them.
You are an expert full-stack developer. Your task is to architect and begin implementing an MVP for an end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) photo storage service, similar to Ente.io, focusing on a web client and a scalable backend. The core functionality is secure photo upload, storage, and retrieval with client-side encryption. Use Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, Tailwind v4 for the frontend, and implement client-side encryption using a robust, well-vetted JavaScript cryptographic library (e.g., WebAssembly-backed libsodium.js or similar for XChaCha20, Argon2 for key derivation). The backend should use Vercel with Neon Postgres for metadata storage (encrypted metadata only, no plaintext photo details) and an S3-compatible object storage service (e.g., AWS S3 or DigitalOcean Spaces) for the actual encrypted photo blobs. Implement a user authentication system (e.g., using NextAuth.js or Clerk) that is integrated with the key derivation process. Your MVP should include: 1) User registration and login. 2) A web interface to upload a single photo, encrypting it client-side before sending it to the object storage. 3) A web interface to view uploaded photos, decrypting them client-side after retrieval. 4) A basic database schema for users and encrypted photo metadata. Focus on demonstrating a secure, functional E2EE flow for one photo upload/download. Provide the initial project structure, key components for encryption/decryption, API routes for upload/download, and a minimal UI. Prioritize security best practices and client-side encryption logic.
Hello HN, Over the last year we've been building ente[1], a privacy-friendly, easy-to-use alternative to Google Photos. We've so far built Android[2][3], iOS[4], web[5] apps that encrypt your files and back them up in the background. You can access these across your devices, and share them with other ente users, end-to-end encrypted. You can also use our electron app[6] to maintain a local copy of your backed up files. We've built a fault-tolerant data replication layer that replicates your data to two different storage providers in the EU. We will be providing additional replicas as an addon in the future. We're relying on libsodium[7] for performing all cryptographic operations. Under the hood it uses XChaCha20 and XSalsa20 for encryption and Argon2 for key derivation. We have documented our architecture[8] and open-sourced our clients[9]. We did a soft-launch on r/degoogle[10] sometime ago, and have since then ironed out issues and polished the product. But we are far from where we want to be in terms of features (object and face detection, location clustering, image filters, ...) and user experience. We are hoping to use this post as an opportunity to c
Reply in the HN thread to Vishnu Mohandas and consider direct email via their website contact if available.
“I'm a solo operator who has built a proof-of-concept for an E2EE photo solution inspired by Ente.io, focusing on client-side encryption and a scalable backend. I'd be interested in discussing technical challenges and potential collaboration on the open-source clients or building out specific features for the privacy-conscious market.”
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