railgun

Railgun

The Firewall for Claude Code — A local-first security hook that protects against secrets leakage, dangerous commands, and unauthorized tool use.

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What is Railgun?

Railgun sits between Claude Code and your system, inspecting every tool invocation before it executes. It blocks secrets from leaking, prevents dangerous commands, and gives you fine-grained control over what Claude can do.

┌──────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│  Claude Code │ ──► │  Railgun  │ ──► │  Tool Execution  │
│  (LLM)       │     │  (Inspect)  │     │  (Bash, Write..) │
└──────────────┘     └─────────────┘     └──────────────────┘
                           │
                           ▼
                     Block or Allow

Key Features

• Secret Detection — Blocks AWS keys, GitHub tokens, private keys, and high-entropy strings
• Dangerous Command Blocking — Prevents rm -rf /, fork bombs, and disk operations
• Protected Path Detection — Blocks access to ~/.ssh/, ~/.aws/credentials, .env files
• Network Exfiltration Prevention — Blocks ngrok, pastebin, webhook.site
• Tool-Level Permissions — Allow/deny/ask rules for any Claude tool or MCP server
• Sub-Millisecond Latency — < 1ms p99 overhead, won't slow down your workflow

Installation

Quick Install (Recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/douglance/railgun/main/install.sh | bash

This will:

1. Download the correct binary for your platform
2. Install it to ~/.local/bin/
3. Configure Claude Code to use Railgun

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew tap douglance/tap
brew install railgun
railgun install

Cargo (Rust)

cargo install railgun
railgun install

From GitHub Releases

Download the latest release for your platform:

• darwin-arm64 (macOS Apple Silicon)
• darwin-x64 (macOS Intel)
• linux-arm64
• linux-x64

# Example: macOS Apple Silicon
tar -xzf railgun-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
mv railgun ~/.local/bin/
railgun install

From Source

git clone https://github.com/douglance/railgun.git
cd railgun
cargo build --release
cp target/release/railgun ~/.local/bin/
railgun install

Quick Start

1. Install and Configure

# Install the hook
railgun install

# Verify installation
railgun --version

2. Create Policy (Optional)

Create railgun.toml in your project or home directory:

[policy]
mode = "strict"  # "strict" blocks, "monitor" logs only

[policy.secrets]
enabled = true
# Add custom patterns
patterns = [
    { name = "Slack Token", pattern = "xox[baprs]-[0-9a-zA-Z-]+" }
]

[policy.commands]
enabled = true
# Allow specific dangerous patterns if needed
allow_patterns = ["rm -rf ./node_modules"]

[policy.paths]
enabled = true
# Add custom protected paths
patterns = ["*.pem", "*.key"]

[policy.network]
enabled = true
blocked_domains = ["evil.com"]

# Tool-level permissions
[tools]
allow = ["Bash", "Read", "Write", "Edit", "Glob", "Grep"]
deny = ["mcp__*"]  # Block all MCP tools by default
ask = []           # Prompt for confirmation

# MCP server permissions
[mcp.servers.github]
tools.allow = ["get_issue", "list_issues"]
tools.deny = ["delete_*"]

3. Test Your Policy

# Test a safe command
railgun test Bash '{"command":"ls -la"}'
# Result: ALLOWED

# Test a dangerous command
railgun test Bash '{"command":"rm -rf /"}'
# Result: DENIED
# Reason: Dangerous command blocked

# Test secret detection
railgun test Write '{"content":"aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"}'
# Result: DENIED
# Reason: Secret detected in content

4. Validate Configuration

railgun lint

CLI Commands

Command	Description
railgun install	Configure Claude Code to use Railgun
railgun uninstall	Remove Railgun from Claude Code
railgun lint	Validate configuration file
railgun test <tool> <json>	Test policy against specific input
railgun hook	Run as hook (used internally by Claude Code)

How It Works

Railgun integrates with Claude Code's hook system. When Claude attempts to use a tool: