Install — Solo Developer

Install — Solo Developer

pipx install worthless   # or: pip install worthless
cd your-project
worthless

That’s it. worthless (no args) detects keys in .env, splits them, starts the proxy. No code changes.

What it does:

1. Scans .env (and .env.local) for API keys
2. Splits each key into two shards (shard-A stays local, shard-B encrypted in the proxy DB)
3. Replaces the .env value with shard-A — format-preserving (same prefix, same length, looks like a real key, useless on its own)
4. Starts the proxy on localhost:8787
5. Injects OPENAI_BASE_URL / ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL into .env so your SDK routes through the proxy

Your existing code works identically. The proxy reconstructs the key only when the rules engine approves the request — blow your spend cap, the key never forms.

One-line install (curl)

No Python or pipx set up? Install with a single command. The script is version-pinned, and verifies the SHA-256 of every sub-installer it fetches (e.g. the Astral/uv installer) before running it. To check the top-level script’s own bytes weren’t tampered with in transit, compare the X-Worthless-Script-Sha256 response header against what you downloaded — see the install security model for exactly what that does and doesn’t prove:

curl -sSL https://worthless.sh | sh
# inspect first: curl -sSL 'https://worthless.sh?explain=1' | less

This installs the worthless CLI; then cd your-project && worthless exactly as above.

Non-interactive (CI, scripts)

worthless --yes      # skip the confirmation prompt
worthless --json     # read-only state report, never writes

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/shacharm2/worthless && cd worthless
uv pip install -e .

See the README quickstart for the full walkthrough and command reference.