June 17, 2026
Redact now, gossip later
Show HN: Local personal data redaction for any AI tools
Your secrets stay on your computer — and commenters already want even more
TLDR: PII GUI is a desktop app that hides personal details in documents on your own computer, aimed at people who want AI help without exposing sensitive info. Commenters loved the privacy angle, but immediately started demanding smarter tricks like temporary replacements and asking how heavy the app will be.
A new Show HN project, PII GUI, is pitching itself as the paranoid friend every AI user wishes they had: drop in a PDF or text file, let it spot private details like names, emails, phone numbers, dates, and account numbers, then black them out without sending anything off your device. In plain English, it’s a privacy tool for people who want help from AI without accidentally handing over their life story. And yes, the big flex here is that the app says your files never leave your machine, except for an optional one-time download of the local detection model.
But the real action is in the reactions. The strongest vibe from the comments is basically: “Finally, local-first privacy that makes sense.” One commenter flat-out declared that “local is the right call,” which is about as close as Hacker News gets to throwing roses. Another user immediately wanted more chaos-friendly features: not just hiding private info, but swapping it out before sending text to AI and then restoring it later like a magician pulling your identity out of a hat. That suggestion gives the whole thread a delicious “cool tool, but now let me make it even cooler” energy.
The drama here is mild but juicy: people aren’t really fighting the idea — they’re pressuring it to level up. One side is cheering the privacy-first approach; the other is already asking practical questions about model size, app footprint, and whether this thing stays lightweight or turns into a desktop diva. The accidental comedy? Privacy nerds are basically fan-casting the app’s next feature set in real time.
Key Points
- •PII GUI is a local-first desktop app that detects and redacts personal information in PDFs, Markdown, and plain-text files without sending document content off-device.
- •The app supports built-in regex detection and optional local ONNX model backends, with optional model downloads sourced from Hugging Face.
- •Users can review, toggle, and export redactions, including burned-in PDF redactions designed so hidden text is not recoverable from the output file.
- •The software stores task history, custom rules, and results locally using SQLite and on-disk files, and it handles long documents with chunking and a task queue.
- •The project is built with Tauri 2, React 19, TypeScript, and Rust, and includes setup, build, and testing instructions plus a roadmap item for optional ONNX backend wiring for OpenAI.