pii-washer

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased]

Changed

• Social preview image tagline replaced with the project’s actual one-liner: “Local-only PII detection and text sanitization”

Fixed

• A lone first name after a greeting (“Hi Sandra,”) is now detected — a new greeting-based name recognizer covers the case where no surname, title, or NER hit exists
• Street addresses keep their apartment suffix when a comma precedes it (“2847 Willow Creek Drive, Apt 12B” was previously cut at “Drive”)
• State abbreviation + zip (“IL 62704”) is now captured as one ADDRESS span — previously the state abbreviation was only used as context to accept the zip, and itself leaked through

[1.4.0] - 2026-07-03

Added

• ID detection category with [ID_N] placeholders, backed by a new labeled-identifier recognizer: values introduced by a label (“Routing number:”, “CVV:”, “Passport number:”, “License plate:”, “Employee ID:”, …) are detected via the label itself — bank accounts, government IDs, insurance member/group numbers, plates, and organization-internal identifiers, without the false-positive flood that shape-only matching of bare codes would cause
• Dashed credit card format (4111-1111-1111-1111) in the custom card recognizer

Fixed

• Phone detection now catches the common (555) 123-4567 example format — the parenthesized recognizer no longer requires a NANP-valid exchange digit (the area code still must start 2-9; bare-separator formats are unchanged to avoid matching dates/IDs)
• The spaCy model no longer loads twice at startup — a leftover spacy.load() call was discarding a full copy of the ~560MB model before Presidio loaded it again; engine init is now roughly twice as fast with half the peak memory
• Credit card numbers that fail Luhn validation (AI-generated test data, typos) are no longer half-missed: near card context words they’re now flagged whole at reduced confidence — previously spaCy could tag a 12-digit fragment as a date, producing a mislabeled partial redaction that left the last 4 digits exposed
• Date-of-birth candidates now require a plausible date shape — bare digit runs (card-number fragments) and relative words (“today”) are no longer surfaced as low-confidence DOB detections
• Person-name detections no longer bleed across line breaks into the next line’s label (“Michael Torres\nDate of birth” is now trimmed at the newline)

Changed

• UI fonts switched from Google Fonts (Inter) to the system font stack — removes the only external network request the app made
• README, INSTALL, and CLAUDE.md rewritten for public release: current feature set, accurate Node.js requirement (20.19+), tool-specific Python constraint wording, honest privacy section documenting the ~/.pii-washer/pii-washer.log file, desktop-build instructions, and a workflow state-machine diagram
• .gitignore no longer blanket-ignores *.json — the session-export feature that rule guarded was removed in 1.1.0
• .npmrc legacy-peer-deps flag documented (Tailwind’s Vite plugin doesn’t yet declare Vite 8 peer support)
• New brand identity: flat vector washing-machine mark (single master SVG), “PII-Washer” naming everywhere (was “Pii Washer”), header logos cut from ~700KB to 11KB each, favicon and app-icon set regenerated, ~9MB of unused icon/logo variants removed
• README now includes workflow screenshots (Review, Clean Text, Results)

Removed

• “Source” link row in the About dialog
• Internal “Task N” tracker references in detection-engine comments (47 comments now self-contained)
• docs/roadmap.md — internal planning document, not part of the public repo; CHANGELOG remains the project history

[1.3.0] - 2026-06-27

Added

• Typed API exception classes in pii_washer/api/exceptions.py (InvalidStateError, DetectionNotFoundError, DuplicateDetectionError, TextNotFoundError) — each carries its own HTTP status and error code instead of being inferred from the error message
• get_app_version() in pii_washer/api/config.py reads the version from installed package metadata — single source of truth in pyproject.toml
• NoSessionAlert component for consistent empty-state UX across tabs

Changed

• MAX_FILE_SIZE moved from DocumentLoader class attribute to pii_washer/api/config.py; router no longer imports DocumentLoader just for the constant
• useResetSession now targets session-scoped query keys (['session'], ['sessionStatus'], ['sessions']) instead of clearing the entire React Query cache
• Canonical remote moved to a self-hosted git server

Fixed

• ResponseTab re-syncs its textarea off the session’s updated_at timestamp instead of a text length+prefix fingerprint — no longer misses edits that happen to keep the same shape
• add_manual_detection raises the typed InvalidStateError for wrong-state calls, so it returns HTTP 409 like every other state check (was 422)
• Clipboard “copy” actions surface a failure toast instead of failing silently — matters in the pywebview desktop build where clipboard permissions can be denied

Removed

• Legacy string-matching error classifier (classify_value_error) — error responses are now driven entirely by typed exception classes, completing the typed-exception migration
• Always-disabled “Next” button on the Review and Response tabs (forward navigation happens via the primary action buttons)
• GitHub Actions CI and release workflows (.github/workflows/) — no automated CI/release pipeline; lint, tests, and builds run manually on the Windows dev machine
• Update checker (/api/v1/updates/check + frontend “Check for Updates” UI) — relied on the GitHub releases API
• Cross-platform release artifacts (Windows / macOS / Linux executables) — project is Windows-only
• Tauri CORS origins from CORS_ORIGINS (Tauri was removed from the project long ago)
• Orphaned SessionManager methods: get_depersonalized_text, load_response_file
• Dead frontend files: App.css (Vite scaffolding), api/health.ts, unused useAnalyze hook
• Stale .gitignore entry for pii-washer-ui/src-tauri/
• Dummy "version": "0.0.0" from frontend package.json
• Stale __version__ = "1.0.0" from pii_washer/__init__.py (the APP_VERSION in config.py was kept in sync with pyproject.toml; both are now replaced by get_app_version())

[1.2.0] - 2026-04-03

Added

• File format support: .docx, .pdf, .csv, .xlsx, .html
• Extractor architecture in pii_washer/extractors/ with strategy pattern
• Structure preservation: headings, paragraphs, lists, and tables maintained in extracted text
• CI workflow: backend tests (Python 3.12/3.13), Ruff lint, frontend lint/build/test on every push/PR
• Cross-platform release builds: Windows, macOS, and Linux executables via GitHub Actions

[1.1.1] - 2026-04-03

Added

• Settings menu (gear icon) in header with About dialog and Check for Updates
• GET /api/v1/updates/check endpoint for version comparison against GitHub releases
• ALL CAPS name detection in DictionaryNameRecognizer and TitleNameRecognizer
• Typed SessionDetailResponse Pydantic model for GET /sessions/{id}
• Custom placeholder validation (character allowlist, 50-char max)
• React error boundary — app shows friendly error screen with “Start Over” instead of going blank
• Frontend test infrastructure (vitest + testing-library) with store and component tests
• API integration tests with real Presidio/spaCy (skips gracefully if model not installed)
• Codex adversarial review tracker (docs/codex-review-tracker.md) — single source of truth for all 22 findings

Fixed

• Session creation response no longer includes original_text (reduces PII exposure in browser caches)
• Server error responses no longer leak internal exception details
• CORS restricted to only used methods and headers
• httpx client connection leak in update checker
• File size error message corrected from “10 MB” to “1 MB”
• Custom-edited placeholders now detected in unknown_in_text report during repersonalization

[1.1.0] - 2026-04-01

Added

• “Start Over” button in header to reset and begin a new task
• POST /sessions/reset endpoint for clearing session state

Removed

• Session list, import/export, and multi-session management UI
• Backend endpoints: GET /sessions, DELETE /sessions, POST /sessions/import, DELETE /sessions/{id}, GET /sessions/{id}/export

[1.0.1] - 2026-03-20

Added

• Dictionary-based and heuristic name recognizers for improved PII name detection
• Error logging to ~/.pii-washer/pii-washer.log with full tracebacks
• Integration and false positive test coverage

Fixed

• Reduced false positives in name detection (bracketed text, newline bleed)
• ZIP code, phone number, and IP address validation accuracy
• Export toast no longer covers action buttons
• Text selection now works in the Review tab document viewer
• Path traversal guard on file operations
• Security review findings (session data handling, input validation)
• Removed ghost “confirmed” status that was accepted by the data store but never used by the workflow engine
• Declared missing tldextract dependency; added pywebview as optional desktop extra

Changed

• Removed abandoned Tauri build artifacts from the frontend directory

[1.0.0] - 2026-03-18

Initial public release. Local-only PII detection and text sanitization with a React UI and FastAPI backend.

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