Connect your AI to Omitly

You can connect an AI you already use, such as Claude, Cursor or Windsurf, to Omitly. The AI suggests what to redact. You accept or reject each suggestion in the app, and Omitly does the removal and seals the result.

How it works

Your AI proposes. You accept. Omitly removes and seals.

1. Your AI asks Omitly to find or redact something in a PDF.
2. While Omitly is open, the request is held as a proposal. No redacted file is written yet.
3. In Omitly, open Omitly › Proposals from your AI… (on Windows it is in the Edit menu). Choose Show to open the document with the proposed boxes drawn on the page. Check them, move them or delete them.
4. Choose Accept and redact. Omitly removes the content, re-checks the output for what was removed, and writes a sealed file. You choose where to save it in Omitly’s own save dialog.

When a person accepted the redaction in the app, the output’s record says Decided by: a person.

Before you start

• Omitly 4.3 or later, installed and activated. See Activate your licence.
• Node.js installed, so your AI can start Omitly’s helper with npx.
• An MCP-capable AI client.
• Omitly open on the same computer while your AI works.

Set it up

Open Settings → Connect your AI in Omitly. It shows the same snippets as below, with a Copy button. Make sure Accept proposals in Omitly is on (it is by default).

Claude Desktop

Paste this into claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude Desktop.

"mcpServers": {
  "omitly": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "omitly-mcp@latest"] }
}

Claude Code

Run this in a terminal.

claude mcp add omitly -- npx -y omitly-mcp@latest

Cursor

Paste this into ~/.cursor/mcp.json.

"mcpServers": {
  "omitly": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "omitly-mcp@latest"] }
}

Windsurf

Paste this into ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json.

"mcpServers": {
  "omitly": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "omitly-mcp@latest"] }
}

Copilot Studio

Copilot Studio reaches MCP servers through a connector. Follow Microsoft’s current instructions for a local stdio server, using the command npx -y omitly-mcp@latest. We have not verified this one.

Any other MCP client

Use any client that can start a local stdio MCP server, with the command npx -y omitly-mcp@latest.

Once your AI has started Omitly’s helper, it appears under Connected clients in Settings → Connect your AI within a few seconds. Omitly works with MCP-capable clients. That is compatibility, not endorsement: each client is its maker’s product.

What your AI can and cannot do

Your AI can:

• Scan a PDF for personal information and list where it found it, with page positions and a masked preview of each value.
• Find text you name and report where it sits.
• Read a PDF’s text, with recognised values masked unless it asks for the raw text.
• Propose redactions, and ask what became of a proposal.
• Check an already-redacted PDF for content that survives.

Your AI cannot:

• Write a redaction without you. With Accept proposals in Omitly on and Omitly open, every redaction it requests waits in Proposals until you accept it.
• Choose where the output is saved. You do, in Omitly’s save dialog.
• Have the record say Decided by: a person on its own. Only your acceptance in the app does that.

Detection is pattern matching, so treat what your AI finds as candidates to review, not a complete list. Review the boxes on the page before you accept.

Privacy: what stays and what travels

Your documents never leave your device. Omitly does not upload the PDF, and the helper and the app pass proposals to each other as small files in the ~/.omitly folder on your computer, with no network connection.

What your AI asks for does travel. Everything Omitly’s tools return goes to the AI you connected, and from there to wherever that AI runs. That includes region lists, masked previews, and any text it asks to read. If you use a hosted AI, the hosted model receives that text. If you use a model that runs on your own machine, it stays there. Omitly cannot see or control what your AI does with it.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Masking covers only the kinds of value Omitly recognises. A name, an address or a sentence it does not recognise comes back as ordinary text.
• Text inside a document can try to steer an AI. Omitly cannot stop that. This is why every proposal is checked by you on the page before anything is written.

If something isn’t working

Your AI says it redacted a file, but nothing is waiting in Proposals. Omitly may not have been open, or Accept proposals in Omitly may be off. Without the open app, the AI’s write tools run directly, with no review step, and the record does not say a person decided. Open Omitly and check the switch under Settings → Connect your AI.

Your AI does not appear under Connected clients. Restart the AI client after adding the snippet. Check that Node.js is installed and that the snippet is in the right file for your client.

Settings shows “Not ready”. Omitly could not write to its channel folder. Check that you can write to ~/.omitly.

An older helper writes directly. Holding proposals needs a recent helper. omitly-mcp@latest in the snippets above gets it. If you installed the helper another way, update it.

A redaction is refused or blocked. Check that Omitly is activated or still in its trial. See Activate your licence and Plans: Personal and Pro. If it still fails, contact support.

Accept is greyed out. Accept works on proposals for the document that is open in Omitly. Choose Show to open it first.

After you accept

Check the result the way you check any redaction: see How to verify a redacted PDF. If the detector can still find identifiers in the output, Omitly shows Needs Review instead of Safe to Send.