🧼 claude-code-scrubber🫧

Scrub API keys, secrets, and personal information from Claude Code transcripts before publishing them to public repos.

Inspired by Simon Willison's claude-code-transcripts — this tool sits between your raw session data and your public GitHub Pages, giving you peace of mind that you're not leaking credentials.

What it catches

Supported formats

• JSONL — Local Claude Code sessions from ~/.claude/projects/
• JSON — Claude Code for web session exports
• HTML — Output from claude-code-transcripts (preserves HTML structure)

Install

# With pip
pip install claude-code-scrubber

# With uv (no install needed)
uvx claude-code-scrubber scan session.jsonl

# From source
git clone https://github.com/yanndebray/claude-code-scrubber
cd claude-code-scrubber
pip install -e .

Quick start

# 1. Scan first (dry-run) — see what would be scrubbed
claude-code-scrubber scan my-session.jsonl -u $(whoami)

# 2. Scrub and write clean output
claude-code-scrubber scrub my-session.jsonl -u $(whoami)
# → writes my-session.scrubbed.jsonl

# 3. Scrub HTML transcripts into an output directory
claude-code-scrubber scrub transcripts/*.html -u $(whoami) -o clean/

Usage

scan — Dry-run detection

# Scan with verbose output showing every match
claude-code-scrubber scan session.jsonl -u myuser -v

# Scan only high-severity items
claude-code-scrubber scan session.jsonl -s high

# Scan multiple files
claude-code-scrubber scan *.jsonl *.html

Example output:

📄 Scanning session.jsonl ...
  🔴 [HIGH] Anthropic API key  at line 1.message.content  → sk-ant-***…
  🔴 [HIGH] AWS access key     at line 3.message.content  → AKIAIOSFO…
  🟡 [MEDIUM] Email address    at line 3.message.content  → yann.dup…
  🔵 [LOW] Home directory path  at line 2.message.content  → /Users/yan…

🧼 Found 23 item(s) to scrub across 1 file(s):
  🔴 High:   19  (API keys, tokens, passwords)
  🟡 Medium: 2   (emails, private IPs)
  🔵 Low:    2   (usernames in paths)

The scan command exits with code 1 if findings exist — useful in CI.

scrub — Redact and write clean files

# Write to a suffixed file (default: .scrubbed)
claude-code-scrubber scrub session.jsonl -u myuser
# → session.scrubbed.jsonl

# Write to an output directory
claude-code-scrubber scrub session.jsonl -o clean/

# Overwrite originals (careful!)
claude-code-scrubber scrub session.jsonl --in-place

# Custom suffix
claude-code-scrubber scrub session.jsonl --suffix .clean

init — Create a config file

claude-code-scrubber init           # creates .claude-code-scrubber.json
claude-code-scrubber init -f toml   # creates .claude-code-scrubber.toml

Configuration

Create a .claude-code-scrubber.json (or .toml) in your project root:

{
    "username": "yann",
    "severity": ["high", "medium", "low"],
    "output_suffix": ".scrubbed",
    "allowlist": [
        "sk-ant-this-is-a-dummy-key-for-docs"
    ],
    "string_replacements": {
        "MyCompanyName": "ACME",
        "my-secret-project": "project-x"
    },
    "patterns": [
        {
            "name": "Internal ticket ID",
            "regex": "PROJ-[0-9]{4,}",
            "replacement": "PROJ-XXXX",
            "severity": "medium"
        }
    ]
}

Config files are auto-discovered by walking up from the current directory.

Workflow: Claude Code → Public GitHub

# 1. Generate HTML transcripts with Simon's tool
claude-code-transcripts local -o transcripts/

# 2. Scrub them
claude-code-scrubber scrub transcripts/*.html -u $(whoami) -o docs/

# 3. Push to GitHub Pages
git add docs/
git commit -m "Add scrubbed transcripts"
git push

CI gate (GitHub Actions)

- name: Check transcripts for secrets
  run: |
    pip install claude-code-scrubber
    claude-code-scrubber scan docs/**/*.html -u runner -s high

How it works

1. Pattern matching — A curated set of 30+ regex patterns detect common API key formats, PII, and secrets
2. Format-aware parsing — JSONL/JSON files are parsed and scrubbed recursively at the value level (preserving valid JSON structure). HTML is split on tags to avoid breaking markup.
3. Layered severity — You control what gets scrubbed. Need to keep email addresses but redact API keys? Use -s high
4. Allowlisting — Known-safe strings (like dummy keys in docs) are never touched

License

MIT