A Practical Introduction to using sq, Sequoia PGP's CLI (froscon2025)

sq is Sequoia PGP’s primary command line tool. In this talk, I'll briefly present sq's design philosophy and architecture, and then I'll demonstrate several different workflows. sq is Sequoia PGP’s primary command line tool. In this talk, I’ll present sq. I’ll start by discussing sq’s design philosophy. In particular, I’ll explain how sq aims to firstly be a tool for end users, and not developers writing scripts, and what that means for users of the tool. I’ll then present how sq is different from other tools in the ecosystem. In this regard, one of the most important differences is that sq explicitly does not support curated keyrings; users have to authenticate all of the certificates that they use. At first blush, this may sound like a usability nightmare, but I’ll show how sq supports users by managing evidence, which simplifies these decisions. Finally, I’ll demonstrate several workflows. These include how to verify files, how to create and manage a certificate, how to find a certificate and use it, and how to create and manage a CA for your organization. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 about this event: https://programm.froscon.org/2025/events/3397.html