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Redacting a document before you paste it

A customer writes to support about a dishwasher that leaks again after a repair. You want an assistant to draft the reply. The email holds the customer’s name, phone number, email address, home address, and account number, and the reply needs none of them. In this lesson we take those values out before the email goes anywhere and check that the task still works on what’s left. Afterwards a map that never left your computer puts the values back into the reply.

Every person and company in the email is invented. The redaction boxes on this page run in your browser and send the text nowhere. The one step that puts text into an AI tool is optional and uses the redacted version only.

Here is the email.

From: Renske Adelhof <renske.adelhof@example.net>
To: support@norrbeck-appliances.example
Subject: Dishwasher still leaking after repair (account NB-4471-0928)


Hello,


Your technician Tijmen Boskoorn came by on Tuesday to fix the leak in our
dishwasher, a Norrbeck D410. It worked for two days and now the water is
back under the sink. I leave for work at 7:30, so please call me on
+31 6 1234 5678 before that, or write back. My account number is
NB-4471-0928.


Kind regards,
Renske Adelhof
Kastanjelaan 12, Zwolle

What the task needs

Section titled “What the task needs”

The task is “draft a reply that apologizes, offers a free second visit, and asks for a time window”. Read the email once with that task in mind and mark what the reply depends on: the leak came back after a repair on Tuesday, and the customer leaves early in the morning. Now mark the facts that the reply never uses: who the customer is, how to reach them, where they live, which account they have. Support sends the reply from the ticket, and the ticket system already has those details.

Everything in the second group is personal data, and the first lesson of this course said to leave it out unless the tool is approved for it. Redaction is how you leave it out without giving up the tool. The AI Fluency framework files this under diligence, the part of working with AI where you take responsibility for what you hand over and for what happens with it [1].

Replace each value with a placeholder that keeps its role

Section titled “Replace each value with a placeholder that keeps its role”

Deleting a name leaves a sentence with a hole in it, and a model drafting a reply from “Your technician came by” can no longer tell that two people are in the story. A placeholder keeps the role: Person 1 for the customer and Person 2 for the technician, [phone] and [address] for the contact details. The same placeholder goes everywhere the value appears. Both mentions of the account number become [account number], and the reader still knows they’re one thing.

The box below holds the email and a map of six rows, each an original value and its placeholder. Press Redact. Redact replaces every value with its placeholder, longest value first, so a full name is replaced before a shorter value it contains.

This is the redacted email.

From: Person 1 <[email]>
To: support@norrbeck-appliances.example
Subject: Dishwasher still leaking after repair (account [account number])


Hello,


Your technician Person 2 came by on Tuesday to fix the leak in our
dishwasher, a Norrbeck D410. It worked for two days and now the water is
back under the sink. I leave for work at 7:30, so please call me on
[phone] before that, or write back. My account number is
[account number].


Kind regards,
Person 1
[address]

Read the result as the model would. It’s still a complaint about a leak that came back, from someone who has to leave early. The technician was there on Tuesday. The support address and the product name are still in it, because they belong to the company and the task may need them.

The task works as well on the redacted text

Section titled “The task works as well on the redacted text”

To see this for yourself, put the task and the redacted email into the chat tool you use at work. That paste is safe because the people are invented and their details are already replaced. You can also skip it. The exchange below is illustrative: the author wrote it to show the pattern, and yours reads a little differently.

Prompt (illustrative, not a recorded transcript)

Draft a short reply to the customer email between the triple quotes. Apologize, offer a free second visit this week, and ask for two time windows that suit them. Keep the placeholders exactly as written.

""" [the redacted email, pasted in full] """

Response

Dear Person 1,

Thank you for letting us know, and I am sorry the leak came back so soon after Person 2’s visit. We would like to send a technician again this week, and we pay for the visit. Could you give us two time windows that suit you, outside your morning departure? Until then, please keep the water supply to the dishwasher closed.

Kind regards, Norrbeck Appliances customer support

The reply is as good as one drafted on the original. The model used the early departure and the visit that didn’t hold, and it needed nothing that was taken out. That’s the usual case. Most tasks read the facts of a document, and the identifiers in it are there for the humans who file and answer it.

The colleague’s version is in the box below, with an empty map. Under it is a list of eight details from the original, in this order: name, initials, phone, email, account number, street, city, technician. After a pass, the box prints still identifying: and then the labels of the details it still finds, separated by a comma and a space.

Checkpoint · predict

What does the check print?

Section titled “What does the check print?”

Read the colleague’s version in the box above, including the subject line and the signature. Before you press Redact, write down what the box prints.

For the colleague’s version as it is, the box above prints this line.

still identifying: initials, account number, city, technician

Now finish the colleague’s redaction. Add a map row for each detail the line names, such as Zwolle => [city], and press Redact again. When the line says none of the listed details, compare the result with the redacted email above.

The redaction map stays with you

Section titled “The redaction map stays with you”

The reply says “Dear Person 1”, and that isn’t the customer’s name. The map that produced the redaction turns it back. The box below holds the reply from the illustrative response and the same map. Press Restore, and each placeholder is replaced by the value it stood for.

This is the restored reply.

Dear Renske Adelhof,


Thank you for letting us know, and I am sorry the leak came back so soon
after Tijmen Boskoorn's visit. We would like to send a technician again this
week, and we pay for the visit. Could you give us two time windows that
suit you, outside your morning departure? Until then, please keep the
water supply to the dishwasher closed.


Kind regards,
Norrbeck Appliances customer support

The map is the one file in this lesson that holds every identifier in one place, so it is the one file that never goes into the tool. Keep it where the original document is kept, in the ticket system or in a folder your organization already protects, and delete it when the reply has gone out. Without the map the redacted text is pseudonymized: the people have placeholders instead of names. It isn’t anonymous, because the dishwasher model, the Tuesday visit and the company address are still in it, and someone with the ticket system could match them. With the map the reply is still addressed to a person. For a document you redact by hand, the map is a two-column table in a text file. The map box on this page takes one value => placeholder per line, and so does the exercise below.

Checkpoint · scenario

Ready to paste?

Section titled “Ready to paste?”

A colleague shows you the prompt they’re about to send. The greeting reads “Dear Person 1”, and below the body is the customer’s full signature block: name, job title, employer, mobile number, and office address. What do you tell them?

Send what the task needs

Section titled “Send what the task needs”

Send what the task needs and no more. Before a document goes into a tool, read it with the task in mind and split it in two: the facts the task uses, and the details that say who is involved. Replace every detail in the second group with a placeholder that keeps its role, check the subject line and the signature, and then keep the map with the original. When the answer comes back, the map puts the people back in.

Exercise

The box below holds the full ticket the email came from: the customer’s email, an internal note from the technician, and a message from the planner, about forty lines in all. Its map is empty. Write a map in the map box, one value => placeholder per line, and press Redact. Read the output line by line and add a row for every detail that still points at a person, then press Redact again. Plan on ten minutes. This is the whole procedure, and after one full pass you can apply it to the next document without looking anything up.

A good result doesn’t name a person or hold a phone number, email address, account number, ticket number, order number, or street. A reader can still tell that a door seal was replaced and that the inlet hose is the next suspect, and that Thursday afternoon is on offer. After your own pass, compare your map with this one, which leaves none of those details in the ticket.

Renske Adelhof => Person 1
renske.adelhof@example.net => [email 1]
Tijmen Boskoorn => Person 2
Sander Adelhof => Person 3
Marit Zandvliet-Oosterhuis => Person 4
+31 6 1234 5678 => [phone 1]
+31 6 8765 4321 => [phone 2]
NB-4471-0928 => [account number]
NB-2026-08814 => [ticket number]
55-31972 => [order number]
Kastanjelaan 12, Zwolle => [address]
Kastanjelaan 12 => [address]
Zwolle => [city]

Then answer one question: which detail in the ticket did you notice last, and where in the document was it?

Stretch: Take one document from your own work and do the same on paper: list the values you would replace and their placeholders, without pasting the document anywhere.

Recap

  1. Read the document with the task in mind and split it in two: the facts the task uses, and the details that say who is involved. The reply to a leak needs the leak and the departure time. It doesn’t need the identifiers.
  2. Replace each identifier with a placeholder that keeps its role, Person 1, Person 2, [account number], and use the same placeholder everywhere the value appears.
  3. The task works as well on the redacted text. Most tasks read the facts of a document, and the identifiers are there for the people who file and answer it.
  4. A partial redaction that leaves an initial, a city or an account number in the subject line is a redaction of nothing. Check the subject line and the signature.
  5. Keep the redaction map outside the tool, where the original is kept, and use it to put the names back into the answer. Send what the task needs and no more.

You can now

  • Decides what may go into a prompt and what may not

References

Section titled “References”
  1. Anthropic. AI Fluency: Framework and foundations. Claude Academy. Course. Academy ai-fluency-framework-foundations