Secret Guard
VS Code extension that detects secrets in your editor and warns you before you save. v1 focuses on one job: catch common API keys, tokens, and passwords before they hit disk or git.
What it does (v1)
- Live detection — scans open files as you type; shows red squiggles (diagnostics) on suspicious lines
- Line highlight — light red background on lines containing secrets
- Save warning — before save, shows a warning if high-confidence secrets are found (does not hard-block; you decide)
- Workspace scan — command
Secret Guard: Scan Workspace lists all findings across the project
- Configurable — enable/disable each pattern type, add custom regex, ignore paths
What it does NOT do (yet)
- No team dashboard, history, or cloud sync
- No git pre-commit hook (editor-only for now)
- No automatic secret rotation or vault integration
- Cannot guarantee 100% coverage — regex-based detection has limits
Privacy
100% local. Secret Guard runs entirely on your machine. No network calls, no telemetry, no code sent anywhere. Your secrets never leave VS Code.
Supported patterns
| Pattern |
Confidence |
Example |
| AWS Access Key |
high |
AKIA... |
| AWS Secret Key |
high |
aws_secret_access_key=... |
| Stripe live keys |
high |
sk_live_, pk_live_, rk_live_ |
| GitHub tokens |
high |
ghp_, gho_, ghs_, github_pat_ |
| Google API key |
high |
AIza... |
| OpenAI API key |
high |
sk-... |
| Anthropic API key |
high |
sk-ant-... |
| Slack tokens |
high |
xoxb-, xoxp-, etc. |
| Generic assignments |
medium |
API_KEY=, SECRET=, PASSWORD=, TOKEN= |
| Private key headers |
high |
-----BEGIN ... PRIVATE KEY----- |
Tracked .env file |
high |
.env committed to git |
Placeholder values (your_key_here, xxx, ${...}, process.env.*, etc.) are filtered to reduce false positives.
Configuration
{
"secretGuard.enabled": true,
"secretGuard.warnOnSave": true,
"secretGuard.patterns.awsAccessKey": true,
"secretGuard.customPatterns": [
{ "name": "My Token", "pattern": "mytoken_[A-Za-z0-9]{32}", "confidence": "high" }
],
"secretGuard.ignorePaths": ["**/test/fixtures/**"]
}
Development
npm install
npm run compile
# F5 in VS Code to launch Extension Development Host
npm run package # builds .vsix
License
MIT
