Trestle
Trestle is a local secret scanner built for AI-assisted development. It runs entirely on the developer’s machine without any network calls or telemetry, ensuring that secrets generated or inserted by AI coding assistants never leave the local environment. The tool scans every file and every commit in real time, catching credentials like API keys, private keys, certificates, and tokens before they are committed to version control or shipped to production. Trestle uses language parsers to understand code semantics, distinguishing between environment variables, constants, and hardcoded values, and it detects leaks across hundreds of service patterns and entropy-based checks. Beyond detection, Trestle provides contextual remediation guidance. For each finding, it suggests steps to extract the secret, what to add to .env files, and how to rotate the credential on the target platform. The Community edition is free and open source, offering core scanning, git history scans, CI integration, and editor support. The Pro edition adds exposure analysis, which traces a secret through assignments and function calls to flag if it reaches an output like a web response or log, and live validation that verifies whether a credential is still active against its provider. Trestle integrates deeply into development workflows. It offers an MCP server for AI assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.), a native VS Code extension, and a Language Server Protocol implementation for editors like Neovim, Helix, and JetBrains. A single static binary provides command-line scanning, a file watcher for rescans, and auto-installable pre-commit hooks. It honors .gitignore and custom skip rules and can output results in text, CSV, JSON, JUnit, SARIF, and XML formats. The scanner is multi-threaded with an incremental cache, making it fast even for large repositories.
- Category
- LLM
- Pricing
- Free
Problem solved
AI coding assistants often generate code that contains hardcoded secrets like API keys, tokens, or private keys. These secrets can easily end up in public repositories, client-side bundles, or logs, leading to data breaches and unauthorized access. Trestle intercepts these leaks locally before the code leaves the developer's machine, preventing accidental exposure and the costly, time-consuming remediation that follows.
Use cases
- Prevent accidental commit of API keys and credentials during AI-assisted coding sessions
- Scan local repositories for exposed secrets before pushing code to GitHub or GitLab
- Integrate secret scanning into CI/CD pipelines to block builds containing leaked credentials
- Audit full git history for secrets that may have been committed in the past
- Provide real-time feedback inside the editor to alert developers immediately when a secret is detected
- Enable AI coding agents to self-check their output for secret leaks via the MCP integration
Audience
- Developers
- ML Engineers
- Data Scientists
Pros
- Fully local and offline; no network calls, no telemetry, no account required
- Detects a broad range of credential patterns using both defined rules and entropy analysis
- Understands code semantics via language parsers, not just regex, reducing false positives
- Provides actionable remediation guidance and platform-specific rotation playbooks
- Integrates with editors, AI assistants, and CI systems via MCP, VS Code extension, and LSP
Cons
- Pro features such as exposure analysis and live validation require a paid upgrade
- Live validation depends on network access and a separate binary, breaking the strict offline model
- Limited to common service patterns and may miss proprietary or internal credential formats
- No centralized management or dashboard for teams; entirely local per-machine
- Some niche languages or deployment targets may not be fully supported
Official website: https://trestlescan.com/
Canonical LambdaBase page: https://www.lambdabase.com/tools/trestle