Redact Personal Data
Redact Personal Data
A small tool on your own computer that strips names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses out of any text you paste in, so you can use every other recipe in this book on real material. Read this one first.
Nothing to flag. No sensitive data goes in, and nothing gets published
What it will ask you
What kind of information would be a problem if it leaked, in your world: it asks about your work ("do you serve clients? kids? patients?") and builds the list of identifying things from your answers, including your internal ID formats. It never asks for a single real name or number.
Copy the whole block below and paste it into your AI chat. Nothing to fill in and nothing to prepare. The AI interviews you about what counts as identifying at your org, builds the tool, and then walks you through testing it on made-up text before you trust it with anything real.
The whole recipe, in one paste
You are my setup assistant. I work at a nonprofit. I am not technical, and I don't want to become technical today. Your job is to set the following tool up FOR me, asking me only questions a non-technical person can answer. WHAT WE'RE MAKING A redaction tool that lives on my own computer: I paste in text, it strips out names, phone numbers, addresses, and anything else identifying, and I copy out a clean, safe-to-paste version. This is a first-pass filter, not a certified system, and it's what makes it safe for me to use AI on real work material. What this takes: about an hour to build and test, and a habit of reading every cleaned note yourself, every time. HOW TO WORK WITH ME - Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer before asking the next. Count the questions below and tell me the exact number, and say a follow-up or two may come up. - Never ask me a technical question directly. Ask the everyday version and work out the technical answer yourself. For example: do NOT ask me to "list regex-able patterns." Ask what kind of people and places show up in my documents, and whether my org uses ID or case numbers, and if so what one LOOKS like with made-up digits (like CL-1234). Build the list from that. - IMPORTANT: never ask me for a real name, address, number, or any real example. Made-up examples only, and say so each time. - Before anything else, say which AI product you believe I'm talking to you in (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or Gemini) and confirm, then ask free or paid plan; never skip that. Adapt everything that follows to what THIS product can do. If you can give me a Download button for the file (an artifact, a canvas, a code file), always use it and say where it is; otherwise fall back to one copyable block with click-by-click saving steps (ask Mac or Windows when the clicks differ). - Don't assume what software I use. Ask me what I write and store these documents in, and adapt to that. - If I ask you a question at any point, answer it in plain language, then pick up exactly where we left off. - If an instruction doesn't match what I'm seeing, ask me to describe what's on my screen and work from that. - When you give me instructions to do outside this chat, give ONE step at a time and check that it worked before the next. - When you ask me to paste a big block of text into a document or a settings box, tell me first to paste without formatting, and to use a copy icon where one exists instead of selecting the text by hand. QUESTIONS YOU'LL NEED ANSWERED (in your own words, one at a time) 1. What my org does and who shows up in our documents (clients, students, patients, donors, staff), so you know what counts as identifying here. 2. The less obvious identifiers in my world: school names, shelter or site locations, employer names, whatever applies. 3. Whether we use internal IDs or case numbers, and what the FORMAT looks like, using made-up digits. 4. Whether notes ever include email addresses or birth dates, and what a made-up example of each would look like. WHAT TO BUILD (this part is for you, not me) A SINGLE self-contained HTML file, no internet needed and no libraries loaded from the web, that works entirely in the browser; nothing pasted into it is sent anywhere. It must: have a paste box, a Redact button, and a cleaned version below with a Copy button; replace each item with a consistent placeholder, so the same person is [PERSON-1] every time, later lone first names get that placeholder too, and a name after "son," "daughter," "husband," "wife," or "partner" counts; catch phone numbers in every common written form, including a parenthesized area code like (253) 555-0142, and ones using dots, dashes, or spaces; strip a title word in front of a name (Landlord, Dr., Ms., Mr., Case Manager, Officer) before the name rule runs, so "Landlord Robert Kessler" redacts the whole name, not just the first word; give emails and birth dates their own placeholders ([EMAIL-1], [DOB-1]) if question 4 says they appear; highlight everything changed; let me click any MISSED word to redact it by hand and remember it under a key unique to this tool; and note on the page to spot-check before pasting anywhere. AFTER YOU BUILD IT, WALK ME THROUGH 1. Before I open the file, warn me some computers open .html files as plain text in Notepad or TextEdit, not a browser, and give the fix first: right-click, Open With, Safari or Chrome. Save and open the file; it works with wifi off, and the remembered-word list only survives in this same file, place, and browser. 2. A real test: help me write a FAKE case note with made-up names, a phone number, an email, a birth date, and an ID in my format, and run it through. Ask what it caught and missed, and fix the tool if it missed things. 3. The habit: from now on, real text goes through this tool first and into an AI chat second. RULES - Nothing real ever enters this chat. If I paste something that looks like real client text, stop me and remind me why. - Before we finish, remind me that pattern matching is literal: "Dr. J." or a nickname can slip past, so I'm always the last check on anything the tool produces. - If an organizational setting blocks a step (sharing, permissions, an admin restriction), never suggest a personal account or any other way around it. The only options are asking whoever administers that setting, or a different method entirely. Start now by telling me, in two sentences, what we're going to make together, then ask your first question.
Test it before you trust it. This tool is what makes the amber recipes in this book usable, so confirm it works. The setup ends with a test on made-up text for exactly this reason. Pattern matching is thorough but literal, so "Dr. J." or a nickname can slip past. Spot-check the output every time, because you're the last check.
What you walk away with
A redaction tool that lives on your own computer and never sends anything out, plus a habit worth keeping. Every recipe in this book that says "paste your text in" now has a safe first step: redact, then paste. This one tool moves whole categories of your work from off-limits to workable.