Cloak·Melon
Preview — not yet released

A desk tool for confidential work

Want AI's help — without handing over the private stuff?

Or to send a document to a mentor or a translator, and keep the sensitive parts to yourself? Then this is your tool. Cloak Melon swaps the private details out before anything leaves you, and puts them back when the answer comes home — all on your own computer.

Not released yet. Just an email address — no name, no company. Early access first, then launch day; leaving is one click, any time.

Decide what leaves your computer — before it leaves. Watch it happen:

A saved email, about to be pasted into an AI tool
An illustration of the round trip. In the app, nothing is cloaked until you've reviewed and approved every item, and the AI step is you — the app never connects to anything. On restore, you're warned if any stand-in didn't come home.

This keeps happening

People's AI chats keep turning up where they never expected them. The past year alone:

Aug 2025 · ChatGPT

About 4,500 shared chats turned up in Google search — résumés, names, personal confessions. OpenAI pulled the feature and called it "a short-lived experiment."

TechCrunch →

Aug 2025 · Grok

Around 370,000 shared conversations were indexed by Google. Nothing warned users that could happen. At least one chat held a password.

Forbes →

Jun 2025 · Meta AI

The app's Share button posted people's chats to a public feed — medical questions and private confessions, next to their real profiles.

Malwarebytes →

Jul 2026 · Claude

Shared chats and documents surfaced in Google search — among them a patient's medical report and schoolchildren's names and phone numbers.

Axios →

Not one of these was a break-in. Every time, a share link did exactly what share links do — with someone's real text inside. You can't control what happens to text after it leaves your computer. You can control what's in it when it goes. If the names never left your desk, what leaks is [[PERSON_1]] — and [[PERSON_1]] is nobody.

Keep the meaning. Hide the identity.

A blank tag keeps a secret but starves the AI of context. Context cloak is the middle setting — try changing the handling below and watch what you'd paste change:

What you wrote

My client Marisol, the CFO at Adelvine Pharma, freezes up in board meetings whenever the Adelvine CV-2 numbers are bad.

What you'd paste

That's the app's review screen in miniature — you set the handling item by item, and you can dial any one of them broader or narrower. When the answer comes home, [[CARDIAC_DEVICE_1]] turns back into Adelvine CV-2, everywhere it appears.

How it works

  1. 1Add a document. Word, PDF, email, spreadsheet, slides — or paste text.
  2. 2Review what it found. Nothing is cloaked until you say so.
  3. 3Copy the cloaked version. The key that matches [[PERSON_1]] to the real name stays here.
  4. 4Take it to any AI or translator yourself. The app never connects to anything.
  5. 5Paste the answer back. Real details return — with a warning if any stand-in didn't come home.

You are the air gap. It prepares the text; you decide what happens next. That's exactly why nothing can leave without you.

Four ways people use it

Working with AI

Coaches, therapists, HR — anyone whose documents are full of other people's lives. Cloak, paste into the AI you already use, restore the answer.

Translating

Compact tags built to survive translation tools. Send the cloaked source through the translator you trust; restore your real details into the translated text.

Sharing with another person

Send the situation, not the identities — a consultant or mentor sees the full shape of the problem, and who it's about never leaves your desk.

Keeping up without opening up

No client, no regulation — you're just not comfortable handing an AI your life. Fair. Cloak the parts that are yours, use the same tools as everyone else, and the real details stay home. You don't have to choose between staying private and keeping up.

Why a melon?

Because before this was an app, it was a translator's trick.

"I used to translate documents full of other people's private details, and I didn't want to take chances with a real name — mistype one, or leave one behind, and it's someone's actual life in the wrong place. So while I worked, the real names simply weren't there: I'd swap each one for a word nobody could ever mistake for a person. Watermelon. Finish the work, then put the real names back at the very end — once, carefully."

"Cloak Melon is that trick, grown up: numbered stand-ins instead of one word, a key that remembers exactly what goes where, and a warning if anything doesn't come home. But at heart it's still the watermelon trick. That's why there's a melon in the name."

— Jenae, founder · Productivity Stacks

The honest version

We'd rather under-promise.

  • ✓Keeps your documents on this computer — nothing is uploaded, ever.
  • ✓Finds likely sensitive details; you decide what to hide.
  • ✓Puts your real details back afterward — and warns you if any don't return cleanly.
  • ✓Proves it: a one-click offline test tries to send data out and shows you every attempt blocked, live, on your own machine. Run it any day, Wi-Fi off for the strongest version.
  • ✕Doesn't lock or encrypt your files — "cloaked" means hidden behind stand-ins, not scrambled with a password.
  • ✕Can't promise it catches everything, and won't call a document "anonymous," "compliant," or "secure" — the final check is always yours.
  • ✕Doesn't protect the computer itself — it's not antivirus or disk encryption. For those, use what's already free on your machine (BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on Mac).
  • ✕Your key — the list matching each stand-in to your real detail — is an ordinary readable file. It has to be: that's how your details come back. Keep its folder as private as the document itself.

Be there when it opens

Cloak Melon isn't released yet. Leave an email address and you'll be among the first in: early access first, then launch day. Leaving the list is one click, any time, from the bottom of any email.