Signet for Mac

Signet is a small Mac app from Countersign, an open-source project for putting a person between an automated tool and an action it cannot take back. When a tool built on Countersign wants to do something destructive, Signet shows you exactly what that is and waits. Nothing happens until you hold a dial and confirm with Touch ID.

Signet is a separate app from AddisDB. It is not part of the database client, and it is only available on macOS.

How it gets onto your Mac

On a Mac, AddisDB puts Signet in your Applications folder and keeps it up to date as AddisDB updates. AddisDB never opens it. The only thing that opens Signet on its own is a request for your approval, and only when there is one waiting.

• If you do not want it, drag Signet to the Trash. AddisDB will not put it back.
• If you already have a different app called Signet, AddisDB leaves it alone.

Opening Signet

Open Signet from Applications or Spotlight. It has no Dock icon and no main window — it lives in your menu bar. Click it to see its menu, with three tabs: Devices, Plugins and Audit. Until you enroll, the menu says not enrolled.

Signet opens when something needs you

You do not have to remember to leave Signet running. When one of Countersign’s own tools — its hook for Claude Code, its database proxy — asks for an approval and Signet is closed, the request opens it. Signet starts in the background, and the approval window appears as it always does. The request that opened it is the one you answer, so nothing has to be asked twice.

Opening Signet approves nothing. You still read the request, hold the dial and confirm with Touch ID, exactly as you would have. If you dragged Signet to the Trash there is nothing to open, and the tool is told it could not get an approval — which is what it was told before.

Enrolling this Mac

Enrolling ties this Mac to you, so every approval it makes can be traced to a person. Until you enroll, Signet cannot approve anything.

1. Click Signet in the menu bar and open Devices.
2. Under Enroll this Mac, enter your email and, if you like, a name.
3. Click Enroll. The approval window opens asking to enroll this device as an approver for your email.
4. Check the email is yours, hold the dial, and confirm with Touch ID.

Your email is stored on this Mac only. It identifies you in the record of what was approved; it is not sent anywhere.

What the approval window shows

When a tool asks for approval, the approval window appears in front of whatever you are doing. It shows:

• At the top, what is being asked and where it lands — the action, then the target and whether it counts as production. A target Signet does not recognise is treated as production.
• The request itself, in full. A long one scrolls, and it is the only part that does.
• Underneath it, what that request will do: lines marked ADV, which come from the plugin that recognised the request rather than from the request itself. They stay in view however long the request is.
• A short digest — twelve characters that identify this exact request. The tool that asked shows the same characters; check they match.
• Who is asking, and how long you have left before the request expires.
• A Decline button.

If what is asking has changed since the last request, the window says so and asks you to Acknowledge before anything else. Acknowledging only says you have noticed; it approves nothing.

If the request was altered on its way to the window, Signet refuses to show it and nothing can be approved.

The hold dial and Touch ID

Approving takes two deliberate steps, so it cannot happen by reflex:

1. Read the request. The dial arms after a moment — it reads “Read it. Arming…” until then. If you were already pressing when the window appeared, it asks you to lift your finger first.
2. Press and hold the dial for the number of seconds it shows. Let go early and nothing is signed.
3. When the hold completes, Touch ID asks for your fingerprint. Your Mac signs the approval with a key that never leaves its secure hardware.

The window then tells you the outcome: Countersigned, Declined, or Expired if nobody answered in time.

Approvals only happen in that window

There is no Approve button in the menu bar menu or in a notification, on purpose. A one-click approval from a banner is an approval of something nobody read. If Signet needs you, the menu shows Something is waiting and the approval window is where you answer.

A Mac without Touch ID cannot approve

Approving needs a fingerprint; there is no password fallback. A tool running on your Mac may be running as you, and software can type a password — it cannot supply a fingerprint. So a Mac with no Touch ID, or a closed MacBook with no Touch ID keyboard attached, can show a request and let you decline it, but cannot approve. Signet says so rather than pretending otherwise.

What Signet does and does not protect

Signet only gates tools built on Countersign — tools that ask it before acting. One example is Countersign’s hook for Claude Code, which makes deleting a file wait for your approval in Signet. Installing or opening Signet does not, by itself, put every AI agent on your Mac behind an approval: an agent that is not set up to go through Countersign is not stopped by it.

A tool that asks for an approval opens Signet if it has to, but it cannot conjure one: if Signet is not on this Mac, or cannot start, nothing can be approved and the tool is refused. A tool someone else built on Countersign decides for itself whether to open Signet; Countersign’s own tools do.