A family of small, ephemeral, identity-free tools. No accounts. No history. A key is the only thing that ever grants access — and when it's gone, so is everything it protected.
An ephemeral, identity-free dead-drop. The key is the only key.
In the pipelinePeer-to-peer file transfer — cinder never touches your files.
In the pipelineChat that still gets through even if they're offline right now.
In the pipelineShare a local server with a friend, no port forwarding.
In the pipelineA dead-man's switch that can't be silently disarmed.
In the pipelinecinder is a bearer-capability relay, not an identity system. A 256-bit key is enough security for a large class of small, short-lived problems — the same trust model Dropbox share links, session cookies, and macaroons already rely on. It's deliberately narrower and less anonymous than Tor or I2P — a cinder operator can see that a connection happened — in exchange for far less complexity and far more usability. "Cinder" names the idea directly: sharing information without bound or record.
Everything here is ephemeral by design, not by accident — in memory, nothing written to disk, a restart clears it completely. Each tool's own /status and its epoch let you verify that yourself, not just take our word for it. (vigil is the one deliberate exception — durability is its entire job — and says so plainly on its own page.)