Privacy & Redaction

whogitit automatically redacts sensitive information from prompts before storing them in git notes. This protects credentials, personal information, and other secrets that might accidentally appear in your prompts.

How Redaction Works

When a prompt is captured, whogitit scans it against a set of patterns and replaces matches with [REDACTED]:

Before:

Add authentication using api_key = sk-12345abcdef

After (stored):

Add authentication using api_key = [REDACTED]

Built-in Patterns

whogitit includes patterns for common sensitive data:

Credentials

Personal Information

Testing Redaction

Use redact-test to see how your text would be redacted:

whogitit redact-test "Connect using api_key=sk-secret123 and email user@example.com"

Output:

Original:
  Connect using api_key=sk-secret123 and email user@example.com

Redacted:
  Connect using api_key=[REDACTED] and email [REDACTED]

Patterns matched:
  - API_KEY (1 match)
  - EMAIL (1 match)

Testing Files

whogitit redact-test --file config.example.txt

Custom Patterns

Add organization-specific patterns in .whogitit.toml:

[privacy]
# Custom patterns
[[privacy.custom_patterns]]
name = "INTERNAL_ID"
pattern = "INT-[A-Z0-9]{8}"
description = "Internal system IDs"

[[privacy.custom_patterns]]
name = "EMPLOYEE_ID"
pattern = "EMP\\d{6}"
description = "Employee identification numbers"

[[privacy.custom_patterns]]
name = "DATABASE_URL"
pattern = "postgres://[^\\s]+"
description = "PostgreSQL connection strings"

Pattern Syntax

Patterns use Rust regex syntax (similar to PCRE):

Testing Custom Patterns

After adding patterns, verify they work:

whogitit redact-test "Reference INT-ABC12345 for employee EMP123456"

Disabling Patterns

If a built-in pattern is too aggressive, disable it:

[privacy]
disabled_patterns = ["EMAIL", "PHONE"]

Common reasons to disable:

Disabling Redaction

To disable redaction entirely:

[privacy]
enabled = false

Warning: Disabling redaction may expose sensitive data in your git history. Only do this if you’re certain no sensitive data will appear in prompts.

Audit Trail

When audit logging is enabled, redaction events are recorded:

[privacy]
audit_log = true

View redaction events:

whogitit audit --event-type redaction

Output:

2026-01-30 14:23:15 redaction pattern:API_KEY redactions:2
2026-01-30 14:20:00 redaction pattern:EMAIL redactions:1

Best Practices

1. Test Before Production

Before enabling whogitit on a project, test redaction with representative prompts:

# Test various scenarios
whogitit redact-test "Your typical prompt with api_key=xxx"

2. Add Organization Patterns

Identify internal secret formats and add patterns:

[[privacy.custom_patterns]]
name = "ACME_API_KEY"
pattern = "acme_[a-f0-9]{32}"
description = "ACME Corp API keys"

3. Review Periodically

Check the audit log for missed patterns:

whogitit audit --event-type redaction --limit 100

If certain patterns are matching frequently, they’re working. If sensitive data is getting through, add new patterns.

4. Use Environment Variables

Instead of including secrets in prompts, reference environment variables:

Instead of:

Connect to postgres://user:password@host/db

Use:

Connect using the DATABASE_URL environment variable

5. Enable Audit Logging

For compliance-sensitive projects:

[privacy]
audit_log = true

Limitations

• Redaction is pattern-based and cannot catch everything
• Novel secret formats may not be detected
• Context-dependent secrets (e.g., “the password is banana”) are not detected
• Redaction is one-way - original text cannot be recovered

See Also

• Configuration - Full configuration reference
• audit - Viewing redaction audit trail