Developer Builds Browser-Based Privacy Tools to Stop AI Coding Assistants Leaking Secrets
A developer discovered he had accidentally sent internal IP addresses, database passwords, and API keys to a cloud AI service while debugging a personal project, prompting him to build two privacy tools. The first, CodeMask UI, is a client-side browser tool built with React and Vite that scans pasted code for sensitive data, replaces it with numbered placeholders, and restores real values after the AI responds. The second tool, CodeMask Proxy, addresses a separate workflow where AI coding agents like Cline and Cursor silently read and transmit local files without any manual paste step. CodeMask UI detects over a dozen secret categories — including AWS keys, JWT tokens, database connection strings, and private keys — using regex patterns, with all processing running entirely in the browser and no data sent to any server. The placeholder registry is stored in localStorage, ensuring consistent mapping across multiple files within the same session.
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