Reading your results

A scan gives you one row per store: a place an AI tool keeps data on your machine. Each row carries a location, the kind of data the store tends to hold, an exposure level, and the amplifiers that raised it.

Exposure level

The exposure level runs info to low to medium to high to critical. It combines how sensitive a store is with the amplifiers acting on it. Its only job is to rank what to look at first. It is informational, not a security verdict. It never says you are safe, and it never says you are at risk.

For exactly how the level is computed, see How exposure is scored.

Amplifiers

An amplifier is something about where a store sits that makes the same data more exposed. A transcript on an encrypted disk, in no backup, readable only by you is one thing. The same transcript synced to the cloud and committed to a shared repo is another. Amplifiers are how PromptDust tells those apart.

Amplifier	What it means	What you can do
cloud_sync	The store is inside iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive	Move it out of the synced folder
in_git_repo	The store is inside a git working tree	Add it to .gitignore, and check it was not already committed
world_readable	Other local users can read it	Tighten the file permissions (chmod 600)
backup_swept	It is included in your system backup	Exclude it if you do not want it in backups
unencrypted_disk	Full-disk encryption is off	Turn on FileVault, BitLocker, or LUKS
large_growth	The store is unusually large	Use the tool’s retention setting, or prune it

Two of these, backup_swept and large_growth, are shown for context but do not raise the exposure level on their own. The reason is in How exposure is scored.

Guidance

Each finding also carries specific guidance for that tool, drawn from its catalog entry: for example, “set cleanupPeriodDays” or “keep ~/.claude out of synced folders.” The guidance is a suggestion, not an action the tool takes. PromptDust flags a store and leaves it exactly where it is.

Acting on a finding

If a store holds a live secret, rotate the secret first. Deleting the file does not un-leak a key that already sat in plain text for months, possibly in a backup or a synced copy. Once the secret is rotated, cleaning up the file is housekeeping.

For ongoing work: keep sensitive material out of AI sessions where you can, and prune old transcripts and caches now and then. What to remove, and when, is always your decision.

The list is a starting point

PromptDust covers a curated set of known tools. It will miss others, and it degrades any check it cannot run on your OS to unknown rather than guessing. A clean-looking scan means “nothing found in the places I know to look,” not “nothing is here.” If a tool you use is missing, you can request it.