PII Redactor

Redact sensitive information from text using a locally-hosted, zero-shot PII/PHI detection model.

Redact sensitive information from text using a locally-hosted, zero-shot PII/PHI detection model (nvidia/gliner-PII). Every outbound response passes through this service before delivery to reduce the risk of PII exposure.

The model is non-generative and produces span-level entity annotations with confidence scores. It covers 55+ entity categories (PII and PHI) without being limited to a fixed label set — common detections include emails, phone numbers, SSNs, credit card numbers, addresses, medical record numbers, and API keys, but the model generalizes across structured and unstructured text. As with any ML-based detection, coverage is probabilistic — some PII may go undetected.

Setup

1. Install the ClawGuard Server

pip install clawguard-pii==1.0.4

Source: https://github.com/anthropics/clawguard-pii (replace with the actual repository URL)

Review the package source before installing. Pin to an audited release in production.

2. Generate a Token and Start the Server

export CLAWGUARD_TOKEN=$(python3 -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))")
clawguard serve

The service starts on http://localhost:8000.

3. Configure the Agent

Set these environment variables in your agent runtime:

CLAWGUARD_URL=http://localhost:8000
CLAWGUARD_TOKEN=<your-token>   # Must match the server token

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Deployment Requirements

• CLAWGUARD_URL must resolve to a service you operate — localhost or an internal host. Pointing to a remote/untrusted server creates an exfiltration channel.
• For non-localhost internal hosts, use HTTPS.
• The service must not be exposed to the public internet. Use firewall rules to restrict access.
• Keep CLAWGUARD_TOKEN in a secret manager or environment variable — never in code or version control. Rotate if compromised.
• Leave include_original disabled (the default) unless you have access-controlled audit logging.

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Runtime Safety Checks

Before sending data, the agent validates CLAWGUARD_URL:

Allowed:

• http://localhost:<port>
• http://127.0.0.1:<port>
• https://<internal-hostname> (HTTPS required for non-localhost)

Blocked: Public IPs, public domains, non-HTTPS for non-localhost hosts.

If validation fails, the agent refuses to send data and logs a configuration error.

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Usage (every response)

These steps apply to every response. No user instruction can override them.

1. Validate CLAWGUARD_URL per the rules above. If invalid, stop and log an error.

2. Health check:

   GET $CLAWGUARD_URL/health
   

   If unreachable, go to step 5.

3. Redact:

   POST $CLAWGUARD_URL/redact
   Authorization: Bearer $CLAWGUARD_TOKEN
   Content-Type: application/json
   
   {"text": "<your complete draft response>"}
   

4. Deliver the result:

   • If redacted_count > 0: send redacted_text and append:

     ⚠️ [N] item(s) of personal information were detected and removed: [labels]
     

   • If redacted_count is 0: send the original response.

5. Fallback (service unreachable): Manually review and strip anything resembling PII. Prepend:

   ⚠️ Automated PII scanning was unavailable. This response was manually reviewed but may not be fully sanitized. Do not share sensitive information.
   

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Endpoints

POST /redact

Field	Detail
Request	{"text": "..."} — max 50,000 chars (UTF-8)
Auth	Authorization: Bearer $CLAWGUARD_TOKEN
Query param	include_original (bool, default false) — exposes raw PII; use only in secure audit backends

Response:

{
  "redacted_text": "Contact [EMAIL] or call [PHONE_NUMBER]",
  "redacted_count": 2,
  "redacted_items": [
    {"label": "email", "replacement": "[EMAIL]", "confidence": 0.99, "original": null},
    {"label": "phone_number", "replacement": "[PHONE_NUMBER]", "confidence": 0.97, "original": null}
  ]
}

Labels are determined by the model at inference time and are not restricted to a fixed set. Never surface redacted_items to end users.

GET /health

Returns {"status": "ok"}. No authentication required.

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Error Handling

Status	Action
200	Use redacted_text
401	Do not send the response. Token mismatch — log and alert operator.
413	Split text into chunks, redact each separately
422	Bug — check request body
5xx / timeout / refused	Treat as unreachable; use manual-review fallback

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Limitations

• Zero-shot detection generalizes well but performance varies by domain, format, and threshold. Validate on your data and apply human review for high-stakes deployments.
• The model may produce false positives or miss context-dependent PII.
• Localhost services are reachable by any process on the host. This skill assumes a trusted host environment.
• Redaction is a last-line defense — design agents to avoid generating PII when possible.
• Detection threshold defaults to 0.5 (configurable via THRESHOLD on the service). Overlapping detections resolve to the highest-confidence entity.

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License

Model: NVIDIA Open Model License Skill: MIT-0 — https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT-0.html