# PII Guard — PII Detection with Character Spans

> PII Guard — PII Detection with Character Spans is a paid API for AI agents from shelf.thirdmade.net, paid per call via x402, $0.001/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Detects personally identifiable information (emails, phone numbers, SSNs, credit card numbers) in text and returns character-level span positions for each match.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://shelf.thirdmade.net/probe/pii-guard
- Price: $0.001/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/pii-guard-pii-detection-with-character-spans-e87ce409
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_CrXS5-lsRv2pKkzqT9zGp

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability pii-guard-pii-detection-with-character-spans-e87ce409
```

Example prompt: Before we store this user message in our database, scan it for any PII — emails, phone numbers, SSNs, or credit card numbers — and tell me exactly where in the text they appear: 'Hi, my name is John, reach me at john@example.com or 555-123-4567, my SSN is 123-45-6789.'

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need fast, lightweight PII detection with character-level span annotations — ideal for compliance gates, redaction pipelines, or real-time input validation before storing or processing user data. It covers the four most common PII types (email, phone, SSN, credit card) without the overhead of a full NLP platform. Best suited for agents that need to scan short-to-medium text strings synchronously before a downstream action.

## Known failure modes

- Missing required 'text' query parameter returns an error
- Very long text inputs may time out or be truncated
- Obfuscated or non-standard PII formats (e.g., spaces in SSNs) may not be detected
- Non-English or internationally formatted phone/ID numbers may have lower detection accuracy
- Empty string input returns no findings rather than an error

## How this service works

Detects PII (emails, phones, SSNs, credit cards) in any text with character spans. Compliance agents use this before processing user data.

## Output

Returns detected PII entities found in the input text, each annotated with its type (email, phone, SSN, credit card) and the character span (start and end index) indicating exactly where in the text the match was found. Allows downstream redaction or blocking without ambiguity about what was detected.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "text"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "text": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Input text"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/pii-guard-pii-detection-with-character-spans-e87ce409/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from shelf.thirdmade.net](https://www.zero.xyz/host/shelf.thirdmade.net/llms.txt)