Kripa Shankar Mishra

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Decision record · accepted

Start the privacy boundary with deterministic local redaction

mastra-pii keeps the first public release deterministic, local, and explicit about failure instead of implying broader unsupported privacy coverage.

Decided Aug 9, 2026 · mastra-pii

Ship Alpha 1 as a deterministic local redaction layer with fail-closed behavior before introducing broader model-backed privacy assumptions.

Context

Privacy tooling becomes risky when it looks broader than it really is. The public README for mastra-pii explicitly rejects ner and model layers in Alpha 1 and refuses to claim perfect recall.

Decision

The first public release stays local and deterministic, built around bounded entity coverage, stable placeholders, custom regex hooks, and a generic fail-closed marker when redaction cannot be completed safely.

Alternatives considered

  • Introduce model-backed NER in the first release.
  • Present the package as a broader document-redaction system before evaluation evidence is public.

Those options would expand the trust surface faster than the public evidence can support.

Consequences

The package is easier to explain, integrate, and review. The tradeoff is intentionally narrower coverage, but the public interface remains honest about what it can and cannot guarantee.