Secrets should really be stored in services, not files outside of maybe a single bootstrap file (unless you're working on the secret storage service itself).

I generate my secrets once, send them off to the secrets service, and then my service queries that service. I never see the secrets with my own eyes.

This sounds like a turtles all the way down kind of think... Then is it OK to keep the secret of the secrets service, or something in that sense.

The idea is that you keep the name of the secret, and grant access to the secret manager via roles / policies which are generally open to devs on a subnet for a development environment but locked down in production environments.

Can you expand on this? What service do you use to store your secrets?

What are you using for this? This sounds like a neat setup.

It is a single bootstrap file, it bootstraps your env variables

I've not come across what you describe

Put a couple hundred line breaks at the top of your .env file so if you open it it’s just white space

I think we're probably agreeing with each other, except I'm not willing to call those things "secret." They're public. If you can plan to properly publicize something, great. But work _hard_ to make sure you're really okay publicizing it.