Invisible AI Character Detector & Remover

Detect • visualize • normalize invisible watermark characters and common “confusables” in text.

• Watermarks (Unicode Cf): zero-widths (ZWSP/ZWNJ/ZWJ/WJ), BOM, bidi controls (LRE/RLE/LRO/RLO/PDF/isolates), etc.
• Special spaces (optional): NBSP/NNBSP/Ideographic/En/Em/Thin/Hair/MMSP.
• Confusables → ASCII: curly quotes, fancy dashes/minus, ellipsis, etc.

The extension can visualize problem characters as ⟦U+XXXX⟧, report exact locations, and normalize text by replacing where a safe ASCII alternative exists and removing the rest.

Why

Invisible controls and look-alike glyphs (e.g., U+2019 vs ', U+00A0 vs space) break search, parsing, and diffs, and are often used for watermarking or sneaky edits. This tool makes them obvious and fixes them safely.

Features

Visualize

• Toggle to replace target characters with ⟦U+XXXX⟧ so you can see & search them.
• Run the same command again to restore the original characters losslessly.

Normalize (Replace-or-Remove)

• When a safe ASCII equivalent exists → replace (e.g., NBSP → space, curly quotes → '/").
• Otherwise (true invisibles like ZWSP, bidi controls, BOM) → remove.

Report

• Output channel report listing line:column and the Unicode code point for every target character found.

Workflows

• In-place clean the current file.
• Save a cleaned copy… to keep the original untouched.

Commands

• Toggle Visualize (Replace ↔ Restore)
  Invisible AI Chart Detector: Toggle Visualize (Replace ↔ Restore)
invisibleAiChartDetector.toggleVisualize

• Normalize & Strip (replace if possible, remove otherwise)
  Invisible AI Chart Detector: Normalize & Strip (replace if possible, remove otherwise)
invisibleAiChartDetector.removeAll

• Scan & Report (Output)
  Invisible AI Chart Detector: Scan & Report (Output)
invisibleAiChartDetector.scanReport

• Clean In Place (replace if possible, remove otherwise)
  Invisible AI Chart Detector: Clean In Place (replace if possible, remove otherwise)
invisibleAiChartDetector.cleanInPlace

• Clean & Save Copy…
  Invisible AI Chart Detector: Clean & Save Copy…
invisibleAiChartDetector.cleanSaveCopy

Note: the legacy commands Toggle (Diagnostics/Decorations) and Fix Double LFs were removed.

What gets replaced vs removed?

Replaced (→ ASCII)

Removed (no safe visible equivalent)

• Unicode Cf format controls:
  ZWSP U+200B, ZWNJ U+200C, ZWJ U+200D, WJ U+2060, LRM/RLM/ALM U+200E/U+200F/U+061C, bidi format/overrides U+202A–U+202E/U+202C, isolates U+2066–U+2069, invisible math ops U+2061–U+2064, BOM U+FEFF, etc.
• (Optional) Newlines if you enable that setting (off by default).

Normal ASCII space (U+0020), TAB (U+0009), and LF/CR are not targets unless you explicitly enable the newline options.

Settings

All settings are under Invisible AI Chart Detector:

• invisibleAiChartDetector.watermark.includeUnicodeCf (default true)
  Treat all Unicode format controls (Cf) as targets.

• invisibleAiChartDetector.watermark.includeSpaceFamily (default true)
  Treat NBSP/NNBSP/Ideographic/En/Em/Thin/Hair/MMSP as targets.

• invisibleAiChartDetector.detect.includeNewlines (default false)
  Also flag LF/CR in diagnostics (usually keep false).

• invisibleAiChartDetector.replace.format (default unicode)
  Visualization style. Regardless, we wrap as ⟦U+XXXX⟧ to restore safely.

• invisibleAiChartDetector.replace.includeNewlines (default false)
  When visualizing, also turn LF/CR into visible tokens (not recommended).

• invisibleAiChartDetector.remove.includeNewlines (default false)
  When cleaning, also delete LF/CR (dangerous; flattens files).

• invisibleAiChartDetector.eolBadge (default false)
  Draw a small ⏎ at each line end (visual aid only).

Example settings.json snippet:

{
  "invisibleAiChartDetector.watermark.includeUnicodeCf": true,
  "invisibleAiChartDetector.watermark.includeSpaceFamily": true,
  "invisibleAiChartDetector.detect.includeNewlines": false
}

Privacy

This extension performs all scanning and cleaning locally and does not transmit your data. It does not include telemetry or analytics. See PRIVACY.md for details.

License

MIT © Vladislav Guzey (https://proflead.dev)