What this means

• ACE-Managed Local Vault Key — The vault automatically generated a key file on first credential save. It is restart-safe and protected with 0600 permissions. This is the default local-first mode.
• Configured Master Key — You provided ADAMANTIUM_VAULT_MASTER_KEY as an environment variable. This is stronger infrastructure hardening and recommended for production.
• Degraded — No vault key is available. Credential storage is unavailable until a key is configured or auto-generated.

In all modes, credentials are encrypted with Fernet before database write. The raw secret is never stored in plaintext.