Best alternatives to Enject in 2026

AI coding tools like Claude Code, Copilot, and Cursor routinely read every file in a project directory — including .env files, which usually hold real API keys and database passwords in plaintext. Enject removes that risk at the source: your .env file only ever contains symbolic references like en://openai-key, while the actual secret value lives encrypted in a separate local vault and gets injected directly into the running process at launch. Enject (formerly called enveil) is an open-source, MIT-licensed CLI tool using AES-256-GCM encryption with Argon2id key derivation and per-project encrypted stores. Commands like init, set, run, list, delete, import, and rotate cover the full lifecycle of managing secrets this way. Secrets are decrypted only in memory for the duration of a process launch and never touch disk as plaintext. It's a young project — v0.2.0-alpha — but has already picked up 501 GitHub stars, suggesting real developer interest in the exact problem it targets.