Install · Quick start · Middleware & audit · Plugins · API stability · Changelog

_{16 detectors · 240+ tests (property · golden-regression · contract · fuzz) · Python 3.9–3.13 · zero-dependency, offline core}

Generic PII libraries target international identifiers and either miss Saudi ones or flag them with no validation. Tabayyan adds first-class Saudi & Arabic identifier support, backed by real checksums — extensible and production-friendly.

pip install tabayyan

Note

A detection aid, not a compliance guarantee — deploy it as one layer in a defense-in-depth strategy, with human review for LOW-confidence findings. See Scope and honest limits.

How it works

_{Input → Unicode normalization (strip zero-width/bidi, fold Arabic-Indic & fullwidth digits) → detection → checksum validation → classification (type · confidence · NDMO level) → redact / hash / tokenize → safe output. Pure-ASCII input is unchanged; matches map back to the original offsets.}

Before / after

scan_and_redact(text, "mask") — detects, then rewrites the original text in place:

Input	Output
المريض محمد بن عبدالله National ID: 1158813996 Phone: +966512345678	المريض [ARABIC_NAME] National ID: [SAUDI_NATIONAL_ID] Phone: [SAUDI_MOBILE]

Why Tabayyan?

Capability	Tabayyan	Generic PII tools
Saudi National ID / Iqama	✅ checksum-validated	❌ missed / unvalidated
Saudi IBAN (mod-97)	✅	⚠️ partial
Saudi VAT · CR · passport · National Address	✅	❌
Arabic-Indic digits & Unicode-evasion aware	✅ normalized	⚠️ often missed
Checksum validation (not just format)	✅	⚠️ rare
Offline · zero-dependency core	✅	⚠️ varies
LLM guard + PDPL cross-border audit	✅	❌
Homograph / Arabic+Latin lookalike domains	✅ (opt-in)	⚠️ rare

Typical use cases

Sector	Example
Healthcare	Redact patient identifiers before notes reach an LLM
Government	PDPL-aware document processing
Banking	Detect Saudi financial identifiers (IBAN, VAT)
Insurance	Sanitize claims & customer documents
Enterprise AI	Prompt sanitization for LLM apps

Works with

Built-in adapters: OpenAI · Azure OpenAI · Anthropic · Microsoft Presidio. Any other stack (FastAPI, LangChain, batch jobs, your own SDK) plugs in via the provider-agnostic Guard.protect_messages / Guard.wrap — see middleware.

Examples

Python API · CLI · Middleware & audit · Presidio · Plugins · Playground

Playground (demo web UI)

Highlight, classify, and redact PII in the browser — public API only, zero external calls. Editor + per-category highlighting, detection cards, JSON view, redaction preview, synthetic Arabic samples, .txt upload, light/dark.

▶ Run it locally:

pip install -e . && pip install -r playground/requirements.txt
uvicorn playground.app:app          # → http://127.0.0.1:8000

Details in playground/README.md.

Status

Public release (v0.8.0). The pre-1.0 version numbers track development milestones — the CHANGELOG documents each. Expect the API to stabilise toward 1.0. What's covered by versioning and what's still experimental is spelled out in docs/api-stability.md.

Install

pip install tabayyan             # core (zero dependencies)
pip install "tabayyan[crypto]"   # + encrypted tokenize vault
pip install "tabayyan[presidio]" # + Microsoft Presidio recognizers
# from source (dev): pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quick start

from tabayyan import scan, scan_and_redact, RedactionMode

for m in scan("call +966512345678 — National ID 1010864542 on file"):
    print(m.entity_type.value, m.confidence.value, m.category.value)

# Redact in one step
result = scan_and_redact("National ID 1158813996", RedactionMode.MASK)
print(result.text)  # National ID [SAUDI_NATIONAL_ID]

Each result is a Match with entity_type, category, confidence (HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW), character start/end, the matched value, and a .redacted() placeholder.

Prefer the shell? echo "National ID 1158813996" | tabayyan scan - — full CLI below.

Windows: if printing Arabic raises UnicodeEncodeError, set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 (a console limitation, not the library) — see the FAQ.

CLI

# detect (table or --json); reads stdin, files, or directories
echo "National ID 1158813996" | tabayyan scan -
tabayyan scan ./docs --json --min-confidence high

# redact: mask | remove | hash | partial
cat note.txt | tabayyan redact - --mode mask
cat note.txt | tabayyan redact - --mode partial --keep-last 4
cat note.txt | tabayyan redact - --mode hash --salt "$SALT"

# CI / pre-commit gate: non-zero exit if anything is found
tabayyan scan ./src --fail-on-find

Filters: --min-confidence {low,medium,high}, --only TYPE..., --exclude TYPE....

Redaction modes

Mode	Output for a National ID	Use case
mask	[SAUDI_NATIONAL_ID]	default; keeps text readable
remove	(deleted)	strip entirely
hash	[HASH:f999c93a6934]	keyed (HMAC), deterministic; correlate without exposing
partial	******8153	keep last N for debugging

hash is HMAC-SHA256 keyed by --salt and requires a non-empty salt — a bare digest of a 10-digit identifier is reversible by brute force, so the key is what makes the token non-reversible. The same value maps to the same token under a given salt, so you can correlate occurrences without revealing the value; change the salt to break correlation across datasets. Treat hash output as pseudonymous, not anonymous.

In code:

from tabayyan import scan_and_redact, RedactionMode

result = scan_and_redact(text, RedactionMode.MASK)
print(result.text)   # sanitised
print(result.count)  # entities redacted
print(result.items)  # per-entity mapping

Confidence model

• HIGH — passes a published checksum (National ID, Iqama, IBAN, credit card). Very low false-positive rate.
• MEDIUM — strong, specific format match with no checksum available (+966 mobile, email).
• LOW — format/context only, meaningful false-positive potential (CR, MRN). Confirm before acting.

Lookalike / homoglyph domains (opt-in)

Beyond PII, Tabayyan can flag domains that impersonate a watchlist using confusable characters (IDN homograph attacks), mixed scripts (including Arabic+Latin), or edit-distance typosquats.

tabayyan domains email.eml --watchlist my-domains.txt

from tabayyan.homoglyph import scan_text

scan_text("login at ex\u0430mple.com", ["example.com"])
# -> impersonation (Cyrillic 'a'), target example.com, HIGH

This is not in the default PII detector set — construct LookalikeDomainDetector(watchlist=...) or use the domains command.

Benchmarks

Reproducible on a synthetic corpus with hard negatives:

python benchmarks/run.py --write  # writes benchmarks/RESULTS.md

The headline is the false-positive contrast against a naive format-only regex — checksum validation removes the entire decoy class:

Entity type	Naive regex FP	Tabayyan FP
saudi_national_id	300	0
saudi_iqama	300	0
saudi_iban	300	0
credit_card	300	0

(300 invalid-checksum decoys per type. Synthetic data measures detectors against their design assumptions, not real-world traffic — see the honest caveat below.)

The run also reports an evasion-robustness section: recall on identifiers hidden behind zero-width, Arabic-Indic, or fullwidth characters, with the normalization pre-pass on vs off — recall stays 1.000 normalized and collapses without it. Full tables in benchmarks/RESULTS.md.

Validators are independently cross-checked: National ID against alhazmy13/Saudi-ID-Validator, and IBAN + Luhn against python-stdnum plus official card-network test PANs. See REFERENCES.md.

Docker & pre-commit

# Docker
docker build -t tabayyan:local .
echo "National ID 1158813996" | docker run --rm -i tabayyan:local scan -

# pre-commit: block accidental PII in commits
# add this repo to .pre-commit-config.yaml (see the file in this repo)

Middleware & audit (Azure / OpenAI)

Put a guard in front of your LLM endpoint: redact personal data before it leaves, and emit an audit trail — including cross-border transfer flagging (PDPL Art. 29) for endpoints outside the Kingdom.

from tabayyan import Guard, AuditLog, RedactionMode

guard = Guard(in_kingdom_hosts=["llm.myhospital.health.sa"],
              audit=AuditLog(path="audit.jsonl"))
pr = guard.protect("الهوية 1158813996", destination="https://contoso.openai.azure.com")
pr.text                         # redacted before send
pr.audit.cross_border_transfer  # True for external endpoints with personal data

Wrap any LLM client — OpenAI/Azure or Anthropic, auto-detected — with guard.wrap(client, destination=...), then call .create(...); PII is redacted before the request leaves. See docs/middleware.md.

Use it inside Presidio

Already on Microsoft Presidio? Add Tabayyan's validated Saudi/Arabic recognizers with one import:

pip install "tabayyan[presidio]"

from presidio_analyzer import AnalyzerEngine
from tabayyan.integrations.presidio import register_saudi_recognizers

analyzer = AnalyzerEngine()
register_saudi_recognizers(analyzer)  # SA_NATIONAL_ID, SA_IQAMA, SA_IBAN, ...

It complements Presidio (adds what it lacks, no duplication) and is parity-tested against the standalone engine. See docs/presidio.md.

Performance

Single-threaded, default detector set, on synthetic text:

python benchmarks/perf.py

Overlap resolution sorts in O(n log n) and accepts each match with two bisect lookups; keeping the disjoint set ordered uses list.insert, so the worst case is O(n²) for pathologically dense input (n = matches, not bytes). In practice n is tiny: a dense 5 MB sample (one entity per ~57 bytes) still scans in under 2 seconds on a typical CPU, and real prose is far sparser. For very large files, use streaming so memory stays flat:

tabayyan scan huge.log --stream

Reversible redaction (tokenize)

from tabayyan import scan_and_redact, restore, RedactionMode

r = scan_and_redact("ID 1158813996, again 1158813996", RedactionMode.TOKENIZE)
# "ID <SAUDI_NATIONAL_ID_1>, again <SAUDI_NATIONAL_ID_1>"  (repeats share a token)
assert restore(r.text, r.vault) == "ID 1158813996, again 1158813996"

The vault (token → original) is the reversal key — store it as securely as the source data.

Extending via config

{ "disable": ["saudi_cr"],
  "custom_detectors": [
    {"label": "employee_id", "pattern": "EMP-\\d{6}",
     "category": "organisation", "confidence": "medium"}] }

tabayyan scan note.txt --config my-config.json

See docs/config.md, docs/faq.md, docs/threat-model.md, and REFERENCES.md for algorithm provenance.

Scope and honest limits

Tabayyan is a detection aid, not a compliance guarantee.

• Passing a checksum means a value is structurally valid, not that it was ever issued or belongs to a real person.
• The National ID validator uses the de-facto community Luhn variant, cross-validated against an independent reference (100% agreement on 50k+ samples) but not an authoritative government spec. Confirm before production reliance (see docs/REFERENCES.md).
• Arabic name detection is a heuristic, not ML NER: recall is limited by design to protect precision.
• CR has no public checksum; detection is format + keyword context only.
• MRN has no national format; detection is keyword-context only and is inherently lower precision. It is still tagged as health data, which carries the strictest handling obligations under PDPL/NDMO — weight it accordingly even at LOW detection confidence.
• False negatives exist. Do not make this your sole control for personal or health data.

Project layout

tabayyan/
├── src/tabayyan/   core library (detectors · engine · redaction · middleware) + the `tabayyan` CLI
├── playground/     offline demo web UI
├── docs/           guides, ADRs, threat model, brand
├── examples/       runnable snippets
└── benchmarks/     precision/recall + evasion harness

Roadmap

• v0.1 — detection core + Saudi/generic detectors + tests.
• v0.2 — redaction modes (mask/remove/hash/partial) + CLI.
• v0.3 — homoglyph/lookalike-domain detection, benchmark suite, Docker / pre-commit / PyPI / docs.
• v0.4 — Arabic name detection, streaming large files, reversible tokenize redaction, JSON config + custom detectors, faster bisect-based overlap resolution, references + FAQ + threat-model docs.
• v0.5 — middleware + audit (cross-border flagging) and Presidio integration (validated Saudi recognizers).
• v0.6 — six new Saudi entities (VAT, landline, passport, border/visa, National Address, unified 700); offset-preserving anti-evasion normalization; provider-agnostic adapter layer (OpenAI + Anthropic); NDMO data classification in the audit; password-encrypted tokenize vault; expanded precision/recall + evasion-robustness benchmarks; and security hardening (HMAC-keyed hash, block-path leak fix, timezone-aware audit timestamps).
• v0.7 — detector plugin system (register_detector + opt-in entry_points discovery); verification & governance: property-based tests, golden corpus + contract tests, frozen public-API + SemVer/deprecation policy; expanded threat model; scheduled fuzzing; and release-engineering docs (RELEASE, compatibility matrix, ADRs, detector guide).
• v0.7.1 – v0.7.2 — community-review fixes (README ID checksum + regression test, keep_last alias, Windows/Arabic-name docs); richer PyPI metadata.
• v0.8.0 (current) — Playground demo web UI, README UX overhaul, and the official brand identity.
• Toward 1.0 — the verification, API-stability, and governance foundations are in place; 1.0 is a stabilization milestone rather than a feature one.

After 1.0

A short list of priorities (not a wishlist):

• improved homoglyph / letter-confusable handling in free text;
• additional regional identifiers;
• enterprise integrations;
• performance and streaming improvements;
• optional static typing (mypy) in CI;
• optional prompt-injection heuristics (isolated module);
• a "Trusted by" / adopters showcase — once there are public adopters to name (no placeholder logos until then).

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the detector guide. One hard rule: synthetic data only — never commit real personal data. Releases follow RELEASE.md; supported environments are listed in docs/compatibility.md, and the design rationale lives in the ADRs.

License

Apache-2.0.