scrubfile

Scrub PII from PDFs, images, and DOCX files. Local-only. One command.

Install

pip install scrubfile

For auto-detection (--auto), also download the spaCy model (~560MB, one-time):

python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg

Quick Start

# Redact specific terms
scrubfile document.pdf -r "John Doe" -r "123-45-6789"

# Auto-detect all PII (names, SSNs, emails, phones, addresses, ...)
scrubfile document.pdf --auto

# Preview what would be redacted (no changes made)
scrubfile document.pdf --auto --preview

# Machine-readable output
scrubfile document.pdf --auto --json

Python API

from scrubfile import redact

result = redact("document.pdf", terms=["John Doe", "123-45-6789"])
print(result.total_redactions)  # 5
print(result.output_path)       # document_redacted_20260330_120000.pdf

Features

Comparison

Supported Formats

MCP Server (for AI Agents)

scrubfile includes an MCP server so AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) can redact documents directly.

Setup — add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scrubfile": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scrubfile.mcp_server"]
    }
  }
}

Available tools:

All MCP tool responses use masked labels ([TERM-1], [DETECTED-1]). Raw PII is never included in responses.

CLI Reference

scrubfile <file> [OPTIONS]

Model Requirements

If models are missing, scrubfile fails with a clear error message — it will not silently download during redaction.

Best-Effort Redaction

scrubfile redacts PII from text content in supported formats. Some document elements cannot be reliably redacted:

• Excel formulas that reference cells containing PII
• Embedded objects (charts, SmartArt, OLE objects)
• Non-text elements (form fields, annotations, JavaScript)

These locations are flagged with warnings when detected. Always perform a manual review for highly sensitive documents.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup and guidelines.

License

AGPL-3.0-only — required by the PyMuPDF dependency.

Links

• Website: scrubfile.com
• PyPI: pypi.org/project/scrubfile
• GitHub: github.com/scrubfile/scrubfile
• Issues: github.com/scrubfile/scrubfile/issues