pii-redaction

name	pii-redaction
description	Redact or remove PII (SSNs, EINs, names, addresses, phones, emails, account numbers) from documents while keeping the file in its original format and style. Use when asked to redact, mask, anonymize, scrub, sanitize, or de-identify a document.

PII Redaction

Produce a privacy-safe copy of a document with the PII gone and everything else — format, styling, layout — intact. The redact_pii tool does the rewriting; your job is to drive it well and to catch the PII that patterns alone cannot see.

Workflow

1. Locate the document(s). If the user named a file, use it; otherwise file_search / list_files in the working folder. If several files match, confirm which ones before redacting.
2. Read before you redact. read_document the source and identify the UNSTRUCTURED PII that regex cannot catch: person names (taxpayer, spouse, dependents), employer names, usernames — anything identifying that the user would want gone. Collect the exact strings.
3. Pick the style from the user's words.
   • "black out" / "redact" → style: "black" (same-length █ blocks — the default; layout is preserved exactly).
   • "label" / "tag" → style: "label" ([SSN], [NAME]-style tags).
   • "remove" / "strip" / "delete" → style: "remove". When the user didn't specify, use black.
4. Call redact_pii with the path, style, and the names/strings from step 2 as extra_terms. Structured PII (SSN, ITIN, EIN, email, phone, credit card, labeled account numbers, DOB, street addresses, IPs) is detected automatically. Use categories only when the user asked to redact specific kinds ("just the SSNs" → categories: ["ssn", "itin", "ssn_labeled"]).
5. Verify. read_document the OUTPUT file and check nothing identifying slipped through — especially name variants (initials, "Mr. Smith", possessives) and values with unusual formatting. If anything remains, run redact_pii again on the output with those strings as extra_terms (chain: give it an explicit output_path).
6. Report. Tell the user the output file name/location, the style used, and the redaction counts by category.

Hard rules

• Never repeat detected PII in your reply. Refer to it by category and count ("3 SSNs, 2 addresses"), never by value.
• Never touch the original. The tool writes a new <name>.redacted.<ext> file; if the user asks to overwrite the original, decline and point at the redacted copy instead — an irreversible PII wipe of the only copy is not recoverable.
• PDFs are rebuilt, not painted over. Tell the user the layout of a redacted PDF is approximate but the PII content is truly removed (a cosmetic black box would leave the text extractable — that is a fake redaction and this tool refuses to do it).
• Multiple documents: redact each in turn and summarize per file.