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Every string that enters a note, the ledger or the log passes through redaction first. Layers, in order:
  1. Known formats: AWS access keys, JWTs, GitHub tokens, sk- API keys, Slack and Google API keys.
  2. Credential assignments: password=, token=, secret=, api_key=, authorization: and bearer values; the key is kept, the value replaced.
  3. Connection strings for MySQL, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, AMQP.
  4. Private key blocks.
  5. Personal data shapes: email addresses (replaced by a short stable hash so repeats are recognisable), card-like and SSN-like numbers, IP addresses.
  6. High-entropy tokens: alphanumeric runs of 20 or more characters whose Shannon entropy exceeds 4.5, unless they look like a URL or a path. This catches secret formats nobody wrote a pattern for.

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What is never redacted because it is never read

Tool output. gitvow records the tool name and a shortened argument, never the result. A cat .env is logged as cat .env, and the contents of .env go nowhere.

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Custom rules

Add patterns for identifiers specific to your systems, customer ids, internal hostnames, ticket formats that carry names. Put them in a rules file:
Two locations are read and both apply, repository rules first:
  • <repo>/.gitvow/redact-rules.json, committed and reviewed like the policy
  • ~/.gitvow/redact-rules.json, for identifiers personal to you
Patterns are Python re syntax. Replacements may use group references such as \1. Rules run before the built-in layers. Test a rule from the shell:

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Invalid rules fail closed

If a rules file is unreadable or a pattern does not compile, gitvow writes nothing for that event: no note, no ledger entry, no log detail. It reports the error on stderr and records only that redaction was unavailable. Writing under-redacted text is the one failure a provenance tool must never have, so a broken rules file makes the record go quiet rather than leaky. The default policy requires confirmation before an agent edits redact-rules.json. The Python API remains for embedding: redact(text, custom=[(pattern, replacement), ...]).

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Testing your redaction

Every pattern has positive and negative tests in tests/test_redact.py. Add yours there. The self-check also asserts that a planted token and email do not survive into a note.

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Honest limits

Redaction lowers the probability that a secret reaches git. It cannot make it zero. It does nothing about a secret that is already in the repository, and nothing about people who can already read the repository. Decide deliberately whether refs/notes/sessions is pushed and where.