Ouli Redact finds the identifying details in a file and replaces them with consistent substitutes — every mention of one person becomes the same placeholder, across the whole bundle. Detection, replacement and the final check all run on the machine in front of you. There is no upload step, because there is nothing to upload to.
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RULE PACK 0.11.0 · COUNTS GENERATED FROM THE PACK THE TOOL SHIPS, 2026-09-11
Where the document goes
Redaction software usually asks you to hand over the document first. That is the part firms cannot get comfortable with: the file most in need of protection is the one being uploaded to a stranger's machine, and no amount of encryption in transit changes who is holding it at the other end.
This tool has no other end. It is a desktop application: it opens the file from disk, does the work in memory on that machine, and writes the result beside it. Nothing is sent anywhere at any point in the pipeline, so there is no processing agreement to negotiate about the document itself, and nothing to delete afterwards.
A firm that never switches the update check on has a program that never opens a socket. The installer carries the recognition model and every runtime it needs, and a licence is a signed file checked against a key inside the program — so an air-gapped machine installs, licenses and runs like any other.
The software does not decide what is confidential. It makes sure nothing reaches that decision unseen, and that what the reviewer decided is what actually comes out of the file.
Not just the visible page: tables, text boxes, headers and footers, speaker notes, comments, tracked deletions, and the metadata nobody opens. Scanned pages go through on-device OCR.
Everything found is listed with its location and the substitute it proposes. Confident matches arrive ticked; the rest arrive unticked and wait. Untick anything and it stays exactly as it is.
Within a matter, a party is the same placeholder in every file, so a bundle still reads as a bundle. The mapping stays in an encrypted store on the machine — which is also what lets a produced document be turned back.
The finished text is scanned again for every surface the reviewer chose to remove. If one survived — usually inside a longer phrase that was left in — the tool refuses to write the file and says where.
What comes out
The substitutes are readable, not black boxes. A produced document still says who did what to whom, which is what makes it usable in a review — it just no longer says which real person that was. English files get bracketed labels; Chinese files can take judgment-style names instead, Spanish and French have their own, and a plain mask is there when the house style calls for one.
Every output comes with a signed report: counts by category, the rule-pack and application versions, and digests of the input and output files. Hidden-content findings are recorded as a hash and a length. Nothing in the report reveals what the document said.
Ms Sarah Whitfield of Ardent Logistics Ltd confirmed the transfer to GB29 NWBK 6016 1331 9268 19 and asked us to copy sarah.whitfield@ardent-log.example.
[Person A] of [Company A] confirmed the transfer to [Account A] and asked us to copy [Email A].
Label style, English — the placeholders the tool actually writes. A Chinese file can take judgment style instead (张伟 becomes 张某甲, a company becomes A公司, a bank A银行); Spanish and French have their own, and a plain mask is there for house styles that want one. Whichever style a matter uses, the next mention of the same party gets the same placeholder, and the mapping that can turn it back stays encrypted on the machine.
Formats
What survives a careless redaction is usually in the parts nobody looks at: a comment, a tracked deletion, a speaker note, the author field. Those are read and put in front of the reviewer like anything else.
Body, tables, text boxes, headers and footers, footnotes and endnotes, comments, and tracked deletions.
Shared strings, inline strings, formula results, long numbers, cell notes, headers and footers, shapes and chart labels.
Slides, speaker notes, comments, layouts, masters, charts and SmartArt.
Text removed from the content streams where the page allows it, and the page rendered with the box painted over where it does not. Scanned pages are read by on-device OCR.
Subject and address headers, plain-text and HTML bodies, and attachments to a depth the operator sets.
UTF-8, GBK and Big5, with the encoding preserved on the way out.
Coverage
Generated from the rule pack the tool ships with — pack 0.11.0, 43 rules, 12 of them checked against the document's own check digit before a match counts. Each entry is named the way the review panel names it; a ✓ marks how many of that entry's rules are checksum-validated. Rows marked Everywhere apply regardless of jurisdiction.
| Jurisdiction | What it recognises there |
|---|---|
| Everywhere * | Account number ×3 ✓2Case number ×1Date of birth ×1Device number ×1Email address ×1ID number ×1Licence number ×1Network address ×1Phone number ×2Vehicle number ×1Web address ×1 |
| United States US | Control marking ×3ID number ×2Medical number ×3Postcode ×1 |
| United Kingdom GB | Account number ×1 ✓1 |
| European Union EU | Account number ×1 ✓1 |
| France FR | Case number ×1ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Spain ES | Case number ×1ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Italy IT | ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Germany DE | ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Poland PL | ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Chinese mainland CN | Case number ×1Company number ×1 ✓1ID number ×1 ✓1Phone number ×1address ×1organization ×1 |
| Hong Kong SAR HK | Case number ×1ID number ×1 ✓1address ×1organization ×1 |
| Macao SAR MO | ID number ×1address ×1organization ×1 |
| Taiwan TW | Case number ×1Company number ×1ID number ×1 ✓1 |
| Singapore SG | ID number ×1 ✓1 |
Generated 2026-09-11 from redaction-rules/rules.json. The list is what the software recognises today, not a statement about what any rule requires. Names, organisations and addresses are also found by an on-device model, which no table can enumerate.
A redaction tool that oversells itself is worse than none, because the reviewer stops reading the list. So, plainly:
The list it produces is what the rules and the on-device model found. A reviewer decides what leaves the building; the software's job is to make sure nothing reaches that decision unseen.
Recognition is strongest where a document number carries a check digit, and weakest for names and addresses that look like ordinary words. Read the review list rather than trusting a count.
Pages with no text layer are read by the on-device recogniser. Those pages are marked as such in the review step and painted over as images on the way out.
It is not legal advice, and it does not decide what any rule requires of a particular document. What must be redacted, and for whom, stays with the firm.
The Windows installer is a download away — signed, checksummed, and with the models inside it. For a rollout across a firm, or for macOS and Linux, tell us which platforms you need and how the documents reach you.
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