Redaktyn for VS Code
Stops the secrets you have registered with Redaktyn from reaching an AI tool, from your editor, your terminal and Claude Code. It is the same check the Redaktyn browser extension makes, with the same property: your secrets never leave this machine. Only keyed fingerprints are compared, locally.
What it does
| Where |
What happens |
| Terminal (Claude Code and Codex run here) |
Paste is checked before it goes in. A registered secret is refused, or pasted with the secret replaced (see below). |
| Claude Code (terminal or panel) |
After one command, every prompt, every file it is asked to read or that you attach with @, and every command or tool call is checked before it is sent. A match stops it, or Claude reads a redacted copy (see below). |
| Codex |
After one command, every prompt and every command or tool call is checked before it is sent, including the files a command reads (cat .env, sed -n 1,80p config.yml). A match stops it, or Codex reads a redacted copy (see below). |
| Editor, AI inputs |
A paste or typed secret in a chat input is taken back out, or replaced with its label. |
| Editor, ordinary files |
A registered secret in a file is flagged with a squiggle. Pasting one into a file is refused only if you turn on redaktyn.blockPasteInFiles. |
Blocks show up in your admin's Event Log with the secret's label and where it happened, never the text.
Blocked or redacted: your admin chooses
Your admin's Settings → When a paste is blocked → Let people paste a redacted copy decides, for the browser and for VS Code alike. The extension asks every minute and keeps the last answer when offline; until it has been told, it blocks.
With it on, the secret is replaced by [REDACTED: <label>] instead of the whole thing being stopped:
- A paste into the terminal, the chat box, or a file set to block goes in with the secret replaced. Your clipboard is put back as it was.
- When Claude Code reads a file holding a secret, it is handed a copy with the secret replaced. The file itself is not changed. Codex, and Claude's own shell commands, get the same when the command only reads (
cat, head, grep, sed -n '1,80p', ...): the file name is swapped for the copy. Claude Code asks you before running a rewritten command.
- Still blocked: a prompt you typed with a secret in it (neither tool lets a hook rewrite a prompt, so retype it without the secret), a file attached with
@ (ask for it to be read instead), a command that could write or run something (cp, >, awk, $(...)), a secret written into a command itself, and a file too large to check.
- Every copy is checked again before it is used. If the secret is still found in it, it is blocked instead.
Copies are kept, readable only by you, in ~/.config/redaktyn/redacted. Ones older than an hour are deleted the next time a copy is made, and all of them when you disconnect. Because Claude only saw the copy, it cannot edit the real file's secret lines for you.
Set up
- Redaktyn: Connect and paste the invite link your admin sent. (If you already used
redaktyn-connect in a terminal, you are connected: both share one device.)
- Redaktyn: Protect Claude Code (install hooks) adds the hooks to
~/.claude/settings.json. Anything else in that file is left alone, and Remove Claude Code hooks takes only ours out. Hooks need Node 20 or newer on your PATH.
- Redaktyn: Protect Codex (install hooks) adds the same hooks to Codex's
~/.codex/hooks.json (or $CODEX_HOME/hooks.json), leaving the rest of that file alone; Remove Codex hooks takes only ours out. Codex runs a new hook only after you trust it, so then start codex, type /hooks and trust Redaktyn's two hooks. If your config.toml has hooks = false under [features], the extension tells you, and Codex will not run them until that line goes. Copy Codex hooks config gives you the file for one project's <project>/.codex/hooks.json instead.
What it cannot do
- VS Code gives an extension no way to see inside another extension's panel. What you type into a panel's own box is checked only if the tool offers a hook, as Claude Code and Codex do. Other panels (Copilot Chat, for example) are not covered by anything but paste into the terminal and the editor.
- What you type, as opposed to paste, into a terminal cannot be intercepted by any VS Code extension. Pasting can.
- It matches the exact secrets you registered, and altered copies of them (extra spaces, changed case, invisible characters). It does not guess at unregistered secrets.
- A text too large to check in full is stopped, not waved through.
- The Codex hooks follow Codex's documented hook events and are tested against them, but have not yet been run against a real Codex. Codex itself calls its tool hooks a guardrail, not a complete boundary: a few of its own tools (web search, for example) do not pass through them.
What it sends
Nothing from your editor, terminal or files ever leaves your machine. The extension talks to your Redaktyn server (redaktyn.com unless your admin self-hosts) for five things only: connecting with the invite link, downloading the list of keyed fingerprints of the secrets your admin registered, asking whether your admin allows redaction, when a block or a redaction happens, telling your admin's Event Log the secret's label, where it happened (for example vscode-terminal or claude-code) and when (turn that off with redaktyn.reportBlocks), and telling the dashboard that this device runs the extension so your admin can see who is connected: the extension's version, the VS Code version, the operating system, whether the Claude Code and Codex hooks are installed, and when it was last heard from, every half hour (turn that off with redaktyn.reportPresence). It never sends the text, the prompt, a file name, a path or a workspace name. There is no other telemetry.
On your disk it keeps one session file (the device's key and token), a copy of the fingerprint list and, with redaction on, the redacted copies described above, all readable only by you, in ~/.config/redaktyn. Disconnecting deletes the session and the copies.
Settings
redaktyn.guardPaste, redaktyn.guardTerminalPaste, redaktyn.blockPasteInFiles, redaktyn.scanOnOpen, redaktyn.scanOnSave, redaktyn.reportBlocks, redaktyn.reportPresence.
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