What SEES cannot protect you from

SEES encrypts in your browser, which means the plaintext exists in your browser. Anything with control of that environment sees what you see. Malware, a keylogger, or a hostile browser extension reads your notes after you unlock them, and no amount of AES changes that.

250,000 PBKDF2 iterations make guessing expensive, not impossible. They buy time proportional to how much entropy you supplied. A common word with a number after it is still weak; the key derivation cannot add entropy that was never there.

This is the honest structural limit of any browser-delivered encryption, SEES included. Each visit downloads JavaScript, and a compromised host could serve a version that behaves differently. Zero-knowledge protects you from a server that reads your storage; it does not by itself protect you from a server that changes your client.

Our answers are partial and we will name them as partial: the source is public and MIT-licensed so the code can be audited, and self-hosting removes us from the delivery path entirely. Neither is the same as a formal guarantee.

We would rather say this on our own blog than have it discovered. SEES has not been through an independent security audit. Treat it as early-stage software, weigh it accordingly, and read the code if the stakes are high for you.