How to use CipherStack

CipherStack is a visual builder for cascade encryption — the practice of running your message through more than one cipher in a row. The output of the first cipher becomes the input of the next, and so on.

Think of it like an assembly line at a factory:

• A raw product (your message) enters at one end.
• Each station (a cipher) transforms it in some way.
• A finished product (the ciphertext) comes out the other end.
• Running the line backwards, with each station doing the reverse of its job, gives you the original message back.

The app has two modes:

• Encrypt — reads your plaintext, runs every cipher in order, fills in the ciphertext.
• Decrypt — reads the ciphertext, runs every cipher in reverse with inverse operations, fills in the plaintext. A Round-trip verified badge confirms your recovered text matches.

1. 1
   Open the app (the home page). You’ll see three panels: Library on the left, Pipeline in the middle, Plaintext / Ciphertext on the right. On phones, the panels stack vertically.
2. 2
   In the Library, under Presets, click Simple. Three cipher nodes appear in the Pipeline and hello world is placed in the Plaintext box.
3. 3
   Click the green Run button at the top right. Watch each node light up in turn; its in: and out: values appear so you can see the message change at every step.
4. 4
   The final ciphertext appears in the Ciphertext box on the right. That’s your encrypted message.
5. 5
   Click Decrypt at the top (the mode toggle switches from emerald to amber). The Plaintext box becomes read-only; the Ciphertext box becomes editable.
6. 6
   Click Run again. The pipeline runs in reverse, recovers hello world, and a green Round-trip verified badge appears.

Three panels, one header.

Each cipher has its own configuration. All ciphers work on strings and always produce strings, so chains never break.

Click Run (or press Ctrl / ⌘ + ↵).

• In Encrypt mode, nodes run top-to-bottom.
• In Decrypt mode, nodes run bottom-to-top and each uses its inverse operation.
• After a run, each node card displays in: (the value it received) and out: (the value it produced). Long values are truncated with ellipsis — hover for the full text.

Encrypt example (Simple preset):
"hello world"
  → Caesar(3)  →  "khoor zruog"
  → Reverse    →  "gourz roohk"
  → Base64     →  "Z291cnogcm9vaGs="

The reverse journey brings it all the way back:

Decrypt example:
"Z291cnogcm9vaGs="
  → Base64 decode  →  "gourz roohk"
  → Reverse        →  "khoor zruog"
  → Caesar(-3)     →  "hello world"
  ✓ Round-trip verified

Three ready-made chains in the Library. One click replaces your current pipeline with the preset and fills in a sample plaintext.

Save your pipeline configuration as a JSON file, share it with a friend, or load a previously saved chain.

Follow each one step by step and compare against the expected result. If something doesn’t match, that’s a bug — please report it.

If you want one quick demo that exercises essentially every feature, follow this list:

1. 1
   Open the app.
2. 2
   Click the Classical preset.
3. 3
   Confirm the Pipeline shows Caesar → Vigenère → Reverse and the Plaintext reads attack at dawn.
4. 4
   Press Ctrl + Enter to Run. Watch each node fill in its in: / out:.
5. 5
   Drag the Vigenère node above Caesar. Run again — the ciphertext is now different. This proves order matters.
6. 6
   Press Ctrl + K to switch to Decrypt, then Ctrl + Enter to Run.
7. 7
   Confirm attack at dawn is back and the green verification badge shows.
8. 8
   Click Export JSON. A file downloads.
9. 9
   Click Clear pipeline. Everything empties.
10. 10
    Click Import JSON, pick the file you just exported, and confirm the pipeline restores exactly.
11. 11
    Refresh the browser tab. Confirm the pipeline is still there (it was saved to local storage).