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Get started with AI Smart Redact

Deploy AI Smart Redact using Docker Compose, then upload and redact your first document through the web application. The full stack includes the Manager API, a Worker for entity detection, the Orchestrator for authentication and job management, the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) web application for browser-based review, and two PostgreSQL databases.

Get a trial license key​

To try AI Smart Redact, you must obtain a license key. To get the AI Smart Redact evaluation license key for free, follow these steps:

  1. Sign up or log in to the Pdftools Portal.
  2. On the Products page, next to AI Smart Redact, click Get started or See product.
  3. Next to the AI Smart Redact Trial, click Copy to copy the license key.

The free trial license key has the following limitations:

  • The redacted files contain a watermark.
  • The license key expires after 90 days.
note

The trial license key is valid for 90 days starting at UTC time. The Pdftools Portal indicates the validity period starting at 89 days (as the consumption of the first day already started). This period may slightly vary depending on your time zone relative to UTC.

To get a full license key for production use, contact sales.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker and Docker Compose v2+ are installed.
  • You have a valid AI Smart Redact license key. Log in to the Pdftools Portal to retrieve your license key.
  • On Windows: the helper script requires bash. Use one of:
    • WSL2 (recommended): a full Linux environment. Docker Desktop integrates with WSL2 natively, so docker commands work without extra configuration. Install WSL2.
    • Git Bash: bundled with Git for Windows. Works for all Docker-based scripts, provided Docker Desktop is running and python3 is on PATH (needed by the curl API examples).

Clone the samples repository​

Clone the samples repository and navigate to its root directory:

git clone https://github.com/pdf-tools/smart-redact-samples.git
cd smart-redact-samples

Set up the environment​

Run the setup command with your license key:

./smart-redact.sh setup --license-key "<LICENSE_KEY>"

Replace <LICENSE_KEY> with your AI Smart Redact license key from Get a trial license key.

This creates docker-compose/cpu/.env with your license key and auto-generated ENCRYPTION_KEY and ORCHESTRATOR_JWT_SECRET. No manual key generation is needed.

info

All three services (Manager, Worker, Orchestrator) validate the license key. The Worker fails to start without a license key. The Manager and Orchestrator start normally but reject API requests with HTTP 403 if the key is missing or invalid.

Start the services​

  1. Start all services and wait for health checks to pass: 
    ./smart-redact.sh up
  2. Verify all services are healthy: 
    ./smart-redact.sh health

Once ready, the following endpoints are available:

Redact your first document​

The repository includes a sample PDF under samples/ that you can use to test the workflow.

  1. Open the HITL web application at http://localhost:3000.
  2. Log in with the default credentials (email: admin@example.com, password: Admin@1234!Tmp).
  3. Change the default password when prompted. Never use the seeded credentials in production. For the full first log-in flow and password requirements, refer to Authenticate with AI Smart Redact.
  4. Upload a PDF document containing sensitive data. You can use the included sample: samples/Sample Document — AI Smart Redact.pdf.
  5. Review the detected entities in the document viewer. Each entity is highlighted with its type label.
  6. Add, remove, or adjust detections as needed, then redact the document.
  7. Download the redacted PDF.

For details on the web application workflow, refer to HITL web application.

tip

For API-only usage without the web UI, use the minimal variant:

./smart-redact.sh setup --license-key "<LICENSE_KEY>" --variant minimal
./smart-redact.sh up --variant minimal

Refer to the API reference for endpoint documentation.

Start with GPU support​

For GPU-accelerated entity detection, run setup and start with the gpu variant:

./smart-redact.sh setup --license-key "<LICENSE_KEY>" --variant gpu
./smart-redact.sh up --variant gpu

For NVIDIA Container Toolkit installation and additional GPU configuration, refer to GPU deployment in the configuration guide.

Stop the services​

Stop and remove containers:

./smart-redact.sh down

Stop and remove containers including all data volumes:

./smart-redact.sh clean --volumes

To also remove the downloaded Docker images:

./smart-redact.sh clean --all

Next steps​