The AI sees placeholders.
You see reality.
Paathu masks names, emails, IBANs, card numbers and API keys locally on your device — before your prompt reaches ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or DeepSeek. The reply reads normally on your screen; the real values never leave your browser.
Free for personal use. Paathu installs as a browser extension from your browser's store — Chrome, Edge and Firefox at launch, Safari to follow.
Demonstration of one round trip: you write a prompt containing a real email address, IBAN and phone number. Paathu detects them locally, replaces each with a placeholder such as [EMAIL_1], and only the masked prompt is sent to the AI. The AI answers using the placeholders, and Paathu restores the real values in the reply on your screen. Your data never leaves the browser.
“Only the placeholders reached me. I cannot see the actual data.”
Nothing changes. Except what leaves your device.
No new app, no copy-paste ritual, no server in between. Paathu works inside the AI chats you already use.
Type normally
Use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or DeepSeek exactly as before. Paathu watches the composer — locally.
Review & mask
Before anything is sent, Paathu shows what it found and replaces each value with a placeholder — on your device, with zero network calls.
Reality restored
The AI answers with placeholders; Paathu swaps the real values back in on your screen. The mapping lives only in the tab's memory and is gone when the tab closes.
Trust is verifiable here.
A privacy product should not ask for faith. Paathu is built so you can check every claim yourself.
100 % on-device
Detection, masking and restore run inside your browser. Verify it: open DevTools → Network while using Paathu — the extension makes zero requests.
No account. No telemetry.
Nothing to sign up for and nothing phoning home. There is no Paathu server anywhere in the path of your prompts.
Mapping stays in tab memory
The table linking placeholders to real values is held only in the active tab's memory. Close the tab and it is gone — it is never written to disk or sent anywhere.
Open detection engine
The detection engine's source will be published for audit — read what runs on your machine instead of trusting marketing.
What it detectsv0.2
Pattern matching with real validation where it exists — checksums, not guesswork. Plus your own custom terms.
Free for people. Paid for control.
Masking runs on your device and costs us nothing — so it is free for everyone, forever. Companies pay for policy, oversight and proof.
Personal
- All supported AI chats
- Local masking & restore
- Review before send
- No account needed
Business
- Central policy & custom patterns
- Team admin & seat management
- Audit log & compliance report
- Invoice billing & support
- On the roadmap: Claude Code, Cursor & Copilot — tell us you need it
Enterprise
- SSO / SCIM
- Managed deployment (GPO/MDM)
- DLP export & admin API
- DPA / AVV
Launching on every major browser.
Joining the waitlist installs nothing today — at launch you get the store link for your browser to add the Paathu browser extension (Chrome, Edge and Firefox at launch; Safari to follow). Waitlist members get three months of Business free, and a say in what we build next.
Questions, answered honestly.
If yours is missing, write to office@pradeepkumar.eu.
Is it really local? How can I verify that?
Yes. Detection and masking run inside your browser; the value-to-placeholder mapping lives only in your tab's memory and is gone when the tab closes. Verify it yourself: open DevTools → Network while using Paathu — you will see zero requests from the extension. The detection engine's source will be published for audit.
Which AI services are supported?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek at launch. Copilot, Perplexity and Grok follow based on demand — and Claude Code, Cursor & Copilot are on the Business roadmap.
Does it catch names?
v0.2 catches names following salutations (Mr/Mrs/Herr/Frau/Dear …) and any custom terms you define — alongside emails, phones, IBANs, checksum-verified card and social security numbers, API keys and more. Full on-device name recognition (NER) ships in a later version; honestly, it is the hardest part, and we would rather ship it right.
ChatGPT has a training opt-out. Why do I need this?
Use the opt-out — it is good. But it does not protect against provider breaches, account takeover, legal discovery, or a colleague pasting client data into a free account. Masking means the data never arrives in the first place, and Business plans prove that with an audit trail.
Can I rely on it to catch everything?
No tool can honestly promise 100 % detection — which is why Paathu shows a review step before sending instead of pretending to be magic. You always see what leaves your device.