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123 changes: 123 additions & 0 deletions integrations/presidio.md
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---
layout: integration
name: Presidio
description: PII detection and anonymization for Haystack Documents and text strings, powered by Microsoft Presidio.
authors:
- name: deepset
socials:
github: deepset-ai
twitter: deepset_ai
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepset-ai/
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@SyedShahmeerAli12 Don't you want to add yourself as an author?

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Thanks for the review .. I've addressed all the feedback ....

  • Removed the unrelated thunderbolt.md and thunderbolt.png files
  • Added myself as co-author in the front-matter
  • Expanded the Installation section with:
    • en_core_web_sm as a lighter alternative, with a link to the full spaCy models list
    • An example showing how to download and use a non-English model (e.g. Spanish)
    • A note answering your question about sm vs lg: each language maps to one spaCy model at a
      time whichever is registered in the environment is used, so you can't pick between sm and lg per component

- name: Shahmeer Ali
socials:
github: SyedShahmeerAli12
pypi: https://pypi.org/project/presidio-haystack/
repo: https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-core-integrations/tree/main/integrations/presidio
type: Custom Component
report_issue: https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-core-integrations/issues
logo: /logos/microsoft.png
version: Haystack 2.0
toc: true
---

### Table of Contents

- [Overview](#overview)
- [Installation](#installation)
- [Usage](#usage)
- [Document Cleaning](#document-cleaning)
- [Text Cleaning](#text-cleaning)
- [Entity Extraction](#entity-extraction)
- [License](#license)

## Overview

[Microsoft Presidio](https://microsoft.github.io/presidio/) is an open-source library for PII detection and anonymization using NLP-based entity recognition.

`presidio-haystack` provides three Haystack components:

| Component | Input | Purpose |
|-----------|-------|---------|
| `PresidioDocumentCleaner` | `list[Document]` | Replace PII in document text with entity type placeholders |
| `PresidioTextCleaner` | `list[str]` | Replace PII in plain strings — useful for sanitizing user queries |
| `PresidioEntityExtractor` | `list[Document]` | Detect PII and store entities as structured document metadata |

All components run locally — no external API required. Presidio uses spaCy NLP models under the hood.

## Installation

```bash
pip install presidio-haystack
python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg
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Could we also document how to download the model in the application itself and link the available spacy models? For those who have never used spacy, it might be also worth describing how to set it up for other languages.

Out of curiosity - are we able to use small and large model in the same application? It seems each component accepts a language, but not the model name.

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We also changed this slightly in this PR deepset-ai/haystack-core-integrations#3209 where we added a default mappings of languages to models as a ClassVar

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@SyedShahmeerAli12 SyedShahmeerAli12 Apr 24, 2026

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Hey, good questions! I've updated the Installation section to cover all of this. Added a note
about en_core_web_sm as a lighter option (with a link to the full spaCy models list), plus a
quick example showing how to set things up for a non-English language.

On your question about sm vs lg each language value maps to one spaCy model at a time,
whichever is registered in your environment, so there's no way to pick between them per
component.

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```

`en_core_web_lg` is the recommended English model for best accuracy. For a lighter footprint, `en_core_web_sm` works too — see the [full list of spaCy models](https://spacy.io/models/en) for options.

Each component accepts a `language` parameter (default `"en"`). To use a non-English language, download the corresponding spaCy model and pass the language code:

```bash
# Example: Spanish
python -m spacy download es_core_news_md
```

```python
cleaner = PresidioDocumentCleaner(language="es")
```

Note: each `language` value maps to one spaCy model at a time. You cannot select between `sm` and `lg` per component — whichever model is registered for that language in your environment will be used.
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## Usage

### Document Cleaning

Replace PII in document content before indexing:

```python
from haystack import Document
from haystack_integrations.components.preprocessors.presidio import PresidioDocumentCleaner

cleaner = PresidioDocumentCleaner()
result = cleaner.run(documents=[
Document(content="Contact Alice Smith at alice@example.com or 212-555-1234.")
])
print(result["documents"][0].content)
# Contact <PERSON> at <EMAIL_ADDRESS> or <PHONE_NUMBER>.
```

Original documents are not mutated. Documents with no text content pass through unchanged.

### Text Cleaning

Sanitize user queries before they reach your LLM:

```python
from haystack_integrations.components.preprocessors.presidio import PresidioTextCleaner

cleaner = PresidioTextCleaner()
result = cleaner.run(texts=["My name is John Doe, my SSN is 123-45-6789"])
print(result["texts"][0])
# My name is <PERSON>, my SSN is <US_SSN>
```

### Entity Extraction

Detect PII and attach it as structured metadata without modifying the document text:

```python
from haystack import Document
from haystack_integrations.components.extractors.presidio import PresidioEntityExtractor

extractor = PresidioEntityExtractor()
result = extractor.run(documents=[
Document(content="Contact Alice at alice@example.com")
])
print(result["documents"][0].meta["entities"])
# [{"entity_type": "PERSON", "start": 8, "end": 13, "score": 0.85},
# {"entity_type": "EMAIL_ADDRESS", "start": 17, "end": 34, "score": 1.0}]
```

All three components accept `language`, `entities`, and `score_threshold` parameters at init time. See [Presidio supported entities](https://microsoft.github.io/presidio/supported_entities/) for the full list of detectable PII types.

## License

`presidio-haystack` is distributed under the terms of the [Apache-2.0](https://spdx.org/licenses/Apache-2.0.html) license.