seed-phrase-transposer

This is a simple Deno CLI that prints permutations of a seed phrase to help test if a transposition error occurred while the seed phrase was recorded.

Background

12-word and 24-word BIP-39 seed phrases are ubiquitous in crypto. However, due to the length of the seed phrase, they're often presented to users in a grid. Sometimes bad wallet UIs do not number the words, making the order of the words ambiguous and introducing the risk of a user recording the words in the wrong order (a transposition error).

This tool is intended to show permutations of a seed phrase when read from ambiguous grid layouts to assist with testing and potential recovery.

Example

Consider this 3x4 grid layout:

1  2  3
4  5  6
7  8  9
10 11 12

The grid is intended to be read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. But a user may incorrectly record these numbers top-to-bottom, left-to-right. Like this:

1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12

This CLI will output permutations of the input, helping a user discover the correct one:

> deno run main.ts
Seed phrase: 1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12

1 8 4 11 7 3 10 6 2 9 5 12
1 7 2 8 3 9 4 10 5 11 6 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 <-- Correct permutation found!
1 10 8 6 4 2 11 9 7 5 3 12

Security

This CLI is completely self-contained and does not require any file, network, or environment access. Since Deno is secure by default, the run command above will automatically restrict this access.

Before using this CLI, you should also ensure that command outputs (stdout) are not being logged by your terminal application or any other external programs (e.g. Start-Transcript on Windows/PowerShell or screen/script on Linux/bash).

main_test.ts imports dependencies from the Deno standard library via JSR. Use the --lock flag to check the integrity of retrieved code against the deno.lock file before execution:

deno test --lock

main.ts does not have any dependencies, so deno.lock has no effect on the main CLI.