We've all done it: pasted an API key into a file "just to test," then a week later

it's in your git history, a screenshot, or a livestream. Most secret scanners —

gitleaks, trufflehog — run in CI, after the secret is already committed.

So I built Secret Guardian, a VS Code extension that catches secrets live, in

the editor, the moment they appear — and visually masks them so they never show