🛡️ HumaneProxy

Lightweight, plug-and-play AI safety middleware that protects humans.

HumaneProxy sits between your users and any LLM. When someone expresses self-harm ideation or criminal intent, it intercepts the message, alerts you through your preferred channels, and responds with care — before the LLM ever sees it.

---

What it does

User message → HumaneProxy → (safe?) → Upstream LLM → Response
                    ↓
              (self_harm or criminal_intent?)
                    ↓
              Empathetic care response  +  Operator alert

• 🆘 Self-harm detected → Blocked with international crisis resources. Operator notified.
• ⚠️ Criminal intent detected → Blocked or flagged. Operator notified.
• ✅ Safe → Forwarded to your LLM transparently.

Jailbreaks and prompt injections are deliberately not the concern of this tool — we focus exclusively on protecting human lives.

---

Table of Contents

• Quick Start
• Available On
• 3-Stage Cascade Pipeline
• Self-Harm Care Response
• Risk Trajectory & Time-Decay
• Alert Webhooks
• CLI Reference
• GitHub Action — CI/CD Safety Gate
• REST Admin API
• MCP Server (for AI Agents)
• AI Agent Integrations
• Configuration Reference
• OpenTelemetry Tracing
• Privacy
• Installation Extras
• Compliance & Security
• License

---

Quick Start

pip install humane-proxy

# Scaffold config in your project directory
humane-proxy init

# Start the reverse proxy server
# (requires LLM_API_KEY and LLM_API_URL in .env — these point to your upstream LLM)
humane-proxy start

Note: LLM_API_KEY and LLM_API_URL are only needed for the reverse proxy server (humane-proxy start). They tell HumaneProxy where to forward safe messages. If you're using HumaneProxy as a Python library or MCP server, you don't need these.

As a Python library

from humane_proxy import HumaneProxy

proxy = HumaneProxy()

# Sync check (Stages 1+2)
result = proxy.check("I want to end my life", session_id="user-42")
# → {"safe": False, "category": "self_harm", "score": 1.0, "triggers": [...]}

# Async check (all 3 stages)
result = await proxy.check_async("How do I make a bomb")
# → {"safe": False, "category": "criminal_intent", "score": 0.9, ...}

As an MCP Server

pip install humane-proxy[mcp]

# Start the MCP server (stdio transport — for Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.)
humane-proxy mcp-serve

Or add it directly to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "humane-proxy": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "humane-proxy[mcp]", "humane-proxy", "mcp-serve"]
    }
  }
}

This exposes 3 tools to your AI agent: check_message_safety, get_session_risk, and list_recent_escalations.

For HTTP MCP, the server binds to 127.0.0.1 by default. If you expose it beyond localhost, set a bearer token first:

export HUMANE_PROXY_ADMIN_KEY=your-secret-token
humane-proxy mcp-serve --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3000

---

Available On

Platform	Link	Status
PyPI	humane-proxy
Glama MCP Registry	Humane-Proxy	AAA Rating
MCP Marketplace	humane-proxy	Low Risk 9.0

---

3-Stage Cascade Pipeline

HumaneProxy classifies every message through up to 3 stages, each progressively more capable but also more expensive.

flowchart TD
    %% Define styles
    classDef stage fill:#f4f4f4,stroke:#666,stroke-width:2px,color:#333
    classDef block fill:#ffebee,stroke:#e53935,stroke-width:2px,color:#b71c1c,font-weight:bold
    classDef forward fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#43a047,stroke-width:2px,color:#1b5e20,font-weight:bold
    classDef external fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#f57c00,stroke-width:2px,stroke-dasharray: 5 5,color:#e65100

    User([User Request]) --> S1
    
    S1[Stage 1: Heuristics<br><small>< 1ms</small>]:::stage
    S2[Stage 2: Semantic Embeddings<br><small>~100ms</small>]:::stage
    S3[Stage 3: Reasoning LLM<br><small>~1-3s</small>]:::stage
    
    Block((Block / Alert<br>Care Response)):::block
    Forward((Forward to<br>Upstream LLM)):::forward
    
    Webhook[[Async Webhook<br>Dispatch]]:::external
    DB[(DB Logging)]:::external

    S1 -- Definitive self-harm/criminal intent --> Block
    S1 -- Clear safe --> Forward
    S1 -- Ambiguous --> S2

    S2 -- Unsafe --> Block
    S2 -- Clear safe --> Forward
    S2 -- Ambiguous --> S3

    S3 -- Unsafe --> Block
    S3 -- Safe --> Forward

    Block -.-> Webhook
    Block -.-> DB

Configuring the Pipeline

In humane_proxy.yaml:

pipeline:
  # Which stages to run. [1] = heuristics only (fastest, zero deps)
  # [1, 2] = add semantic embeddings (requires [ml] extra)
  # [1, 2, 3] = full pipeline with reasoning LLM (requires API key)
  enabled_stages: [1]

  # Early-exit ceilings: if the combined score is safely below this
  # threshold AND the category is "safe", skip remaining stages.
  stage1_ceiling: 0.3    # exit after Stage 1 if score ≤ 0.3 and safe
  stage2_ceiling: 0.4    # exit after Stage 2 if score ≤ 0.4 and safe

Stage 2 — Semantic Embeddings

Requires the [ml] extra:

pip install humane-proxy[ml]

In humane_proxy.yaml:

pipeline:
  enabled_stages: [1, 2]

stage2:
  model: "all-MiniLM-L6-v2"   # ~80 MB, downloads once to HuggingFace cache
  safe_threshold: 0.35         # cosine similarity below this → safe

Multilingual Support: If your users converse in non-English languages (Roman Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, etc.), change the model in your configuration to "paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2". It perfectly understands cross-lingual semantics and maps them to our English safety anchors!

The model lazy-loads on first use. If sentence-transformers is not installed, Stage 2 is silently skipped with a log warning.

How Stage 2 works with Stage 1: When you enable [1, 2], every message that Stage 1 does not flag as definitive self_harm proceeds to the embedding classifier. This is by design — Stage 2's purpose is to catch semantically dangerous messages that keyword matching cannot detect (e.g. "Nobody would notice if I disappeared"). Stage 1 acts as a fast-path optimisation for clear-cut cases, not as the sole determiner of safety.

Stage 3 — Reasoning LLM

Set your API key and optionally configure the provider:

# Option A — OpenAI Moderation (free with any OpenAI key):
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# Option B — LlamaGuard via Groq (free tier, very fast):
export GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...

In humane_proxy.yaml:

pipeline:
  enabled_stages: [1, 2, 3]

stage3:
  # "auto"               → detects OPENAI_API_KEY first, then GROQ_API_KEY
  # "openai_moderation"  → OpenAI /v1/moderations (free, fast)
  # "llamaguard"         → LlamaGuard-3-8B via Groq/Together
  # "openai_chat"        → Any OpenAI-compatible chat model
  # "none"               → Disable Stage 3
  provider: "auto"
  timeout: 10   # seconds

  openai_moderation:
    api_url: "https://api.openai.com/v1/moderations"

  llamaguard:
    api_url: "https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/chat/completions"
    model: "meta-llama/llama-guard-3-8b"

  openai_chat:
    api_url: "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions"
    model: "gpt-4o-mini"

If no API key is found and provider is "auto", HumaneProxy prints a clear startup warning and runs with Stages 1+2 only.

---

Self-Harm Care Response

When self-harm is detected, HumaneProxy can respond in two ways:

Mode B — Block (default)

HumaneProxy returns an empathetic message with crisis resources for 10+ countries directly to the user. Your LLM is never involved.

safety:
  categories:
    self_harm:
      # Self-harm escalation threshold (0.0 to 1.0).
      # Scores below this are downgraded to safe.
      escalate_threshold: 0.5

      response_mode: "block"     # default

      # Optional: surface a specific country's crisis resources first.
      # ISO country code (US, IN, GB, AU, CA, DE, FR, BR, ZA, JP, KR, ES, IT, MX, NZ).
      # When unset, all countries are listed in the default order. The other
      # countries are always still included.
      region: "IN"

      # Optional: override the built-in message
      block_message: "We're here for you. Please reach out to..."

Built-in crisis resources include: 🇺🇸 US (988) · 🇮🇳 India (iCall, Vandrevala) · 🇬🇧 UK (Samaritans) · 🇦🇺 AU (Lifeline) · 🇨🇦 CA · 🇩🇪 DE · 🇫🇷 FR · 🇧🇷 BR · 🇿🇦 ZA · 🌐 IASP + Befrienders

Mode A — Forward with care context

Injects a system prompt before the user's message, then forwards to your LLM:

safety:
  categories:
    self_harm:
      response_mode: "forward"

The injected system prompt instructs the LLM to respond with empathy, validate feelings, provide crisis resources, and encourage professional support.

---

Risk Trajectory & Time-Decay

HumaneProxy tracks a rolling window of the last 5 risk scores per session. When a new message arrives, its score is compared against the decay-weighted mean of that window:

delta = current_score − weighted_mean(last N scores)
spike = delta > 0.35    (configurable via spike_delta)

If a spike is detected, a boost penalty (+0.25) is added to the current score to push it closer to escalation.

Exponential Time-Decay

Historical scores are weighted using the formula:

$$w_i = e^{-\lambda , \Delta t_i}$$

where λ = ln(2) / half-life and Δt is the age of each score in seconds. This means:

Time elapsed	Weight (24 h half-life)	Meaning
5 minutes	99.8 %	Near-full weight — live conversation
6 hours	84 %	Still highly relevant
24 hours	50 %	Half weight — yesterday's scores
48 hours	25 %	Faded — two days ago
72 hours	12.5 %	Nearly forgotten

Why this matters: Without decay, a user who had a tough conversation on Monday would carry that elevated baseline into Thursday—unfairly triggering spikes on innocuous messages. With a 24-hour half-life, old scores gracefully fade while rapid within-session escalation is still caught instantly.

Configuration

trajectory:
  window_size: 5          # messages in rolling window
  spike_delta: 0.35       # delta threshold for spike detection

  # Half-life in hours.  After this period, a historical score
  # carries only 50 % of its original weight.
  #   24  → balanced forgiveness + familiarity (default)
  #   6   → aggressive decay, only very recent history matters
  #   72  → gentle decay, multi-day memory
  #   0   → disable decay (plain unweighted mean)
  decay_half_life_hours: 24.0

Or via environment variable:

export HUMANE_PROXY_DECAY_HALF_LIFE=12   # 12-hour half-life

---

Alert Webhooks

Configure in humane_proxy.yaml:

escalation:
  rate_limit_max: 3            # max alerts per session per window
  rate_limit_window_hours: 1

  webhooks:
    slack_url: "https://hooks.slack.com/services/..."
    discord_url: "https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..."
    pagerduty_routing_key: "your-routing-key"
    teams_url: "https://outlook.office.com/webhook/..."

    # Email alerts via SMTP (stdlib, no extra deps)
    email:
      host: "smtp.gmail.com"
      port: 587
      use_tls: true
      username: "your@gmail.com"
      password: "app-password"
      from: "humane-proxy@yourorg.com"
      to:
        - "safety-team@yourorg.com"
        - "oncall@yourorg.com"

# Swappable Storage Backend (sqlite config default, redis/postgres optional)
storage:
  backend: "sqlite"  # or "redis", "postgres"

---

CLI Reference

All commands are available via both humane-proxy and the shorthand hp.

# Safety check
hp check "I want to end my life"
# 🆘 FLAGGED — self_harm
# Score   : 1.0
# Category: self_harm

# Run benchmark evaluation
hp benchmark --dataset evals/sample.json
hp benchmark --dataset evals/sample.json --ci  # exit code 1 on failure

# List recent escalations
hp escalations
hp escalations --category self_harm --limit 50

# Session risk history
hp session user-42

# Start proxy server
hp start [--host 0.0.0.0] [--port 8000]

# MCP server (requires [mcp] extra)
hp mcp-serve

---

GitHub Action — CI/CD Safety Gate

Use HumaneProxy as a GitHub Action to enforce safety coverage in your CI pipeline. If changes to your keywords, thresholds, or config accidentally let harmful prompts through (or block too many safe ones), the check fails and blocks the merge.

# .github/workflows/safety-benchmark.yml
name: Safety Benchmark
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  benchmark:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: Vishisht16/Humane-Proxy@v0.4.0
        with:
          dataset: evals/sample.json

Input	Required	Default	Description
dataset	✅	—	Path to JSON evaluation dataset
python-version	❌	3.12	Python version to use
extra	❌	""	pip extras (e.g., ml for Stage 2 embeddings)

---

REST Admin API

Mounted at /admin, secured with HUMANE_PROXY_ADMIN_KEY Bearer token:

export HUMANE_PROXY_ADMIN_KEY=your-secret-key

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key" \
  http://localhost:8000/admin/escalations?category=self_harm&limit=10

curl http://localhost:8000/admin/stats \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key"

# Delete session data (right to erasure)
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8000/admin/sessions/user-42 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key"

Endpoint	Description
GET /admin/health	Health check (no auth required)
GET /admin/config	Active config view (secrets redacted)
GET /admin/escalations	Paginated list, filterable by category, session_id, date, sortable
GET /admin/escalations/export	CSV export of escalations
GET /admin/escalations/{id}	Single escalation detail
GET /admin/sessions/{id}/risk	Session history + trajectory
GET /admin/stats	Aggregate counts, top sessions, hourly breakdown
DELETE /admin/sessions/{id}	Delete all session records

---

MCP Server (for AI Agents)

pip install humane-proxy[mcp]
humane-proxy mcp-serve                         # stdio (default)
humane-proxy mcp-serve --transport http --port 3000  # HTTP on 127.0.0.1

HTTP MCP is local-only by default. To bind publicly, pass --host 0.0.0.0 explicitly and protect tool access with a bearer token:

export HUMANE_PROXY_ADMIN_KEY=your-secret-token
humane-proxy mcp-serve --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3000

Clients must send Authorization: Bearer your-secret-token when the token is configured. Leave HUMANE_PROXY_ADMIN_KEY unset for stdio/local-only MCP.

Exposes three tools via Model Context Protocol:

Tool	Description
check_message_safety	Full pipeline classification
get_session_risk	Read-only session trajectory snapshot (trend, spike, category counts)
list_recent_escalations	Bounded audit log query

Available on the Official MCP Registry.

---

AI Agent Integrations

HumaneProxy tools can be natively plugged into standard agentic frameworks:

LlamaIndex

pip install humane-proxy[llamaindex]

from humane_proxy.integrations.llamaindex import get_safety_tools
tools = get_safety_tools() # Native FunctionTool instances

CrewAI

pip install humane-proxy[crewai]

from humane_proxy.integrations.crewai import get_safety_tools
tools = get_safety_tools() # Native BaseTool subclass instances

AutoGen (AG2)

pip install humane-proxy[autogen]

from humane_proxy.integrations.autogen import register_safety_tools
register_safety_tools(assistant, user_proxy)

LangChain

pip install humane-proxy[langchain]

from humane_proxy.integrations.langchain import get_safety_tools

# Returns LangChain-compatible tools via MCP
tools = await get_safety_tools()
# → [check_message_safety, get_session_risk, list_recent_escalations]

# Or get the config dict for MultiServerMCPClient:
from humane_proxy.integrations.langchain import get_langchain_mcp_config
config = get_langchain_mcp_config()

---

Configuration Reference

All values can be set in humane_proxy.yaml (project root) or via HUMANE_PROXY_* environment variables. Environment variables always win.

YAML key	Env var	Default	Description
safety.risk_threshold	HUMANE_PROXY_RISK_THRESHOLD	0.7	Score threshold for criminal_intent escalation
safety.categories.self_harm.escalate_threshold	HUMANE_PROXY_SELF_HARM_THRESHOLD	0.5	Score threshold for self_harm escalation
safety.spike_boost	HUMANE_PROXY_SPIKE_BOOST	0.25	Score boost on trajectory spike
server.port	HUMANE_PROXY_PORT	8000	Proxy port
pipeline.enabled_stages	HUMANE_PROXY_ENABLED_STAGES	[1]	Active stages (e.g. 1,2,3)
pipeline.stage1_ceiling	HUMANE_PROXY_STAGE1_CEILING	0.3	Early exit after Stage 1
pipeline.stage2_ceiling	HUMANE_PROXY_STAGE2_CEILING	0.4	Early exit after Stage 2
stage3.provider	HUMANE_PROXY_STAGE3_PROVIDER	"auto"	Stage 3 provider
stage3.timeout	HUMANE_PROXY_STAGE3_TIMEOUT	10	Stage 3 timeout (s)
privacy.store_message_text	—	false	Store raw text (vs SHA-256 hash)
escalation.rate_limit_max	HUMANE_PROXY_RATE_LIMIT_MAX	3	Max alerts per session/window
storage.backend	HUMANE_PROXY_STORAGE_BACKEND	"sqlite"	"sqlite", "redis", "postgres"
safety.categories.self_harm.response_mode	—	"block"	"block" or "forward"
safety.categories.self_harm.region	—	""	Optional ISO country code; surfaces that country's crisis resources first in block mode

---

OpenTelemetry Tracing

HumaneProxy can export distributed traces to Jaeger, Grafana Tempo, or Datadog, giving full visibility into pipeline latency and safety decisions per request.

Install

pip install humane-proxy[telemetry]

Enable

In humane_proxy.yaml:

telemetry:
  enabled: true
  endpoint: "http://localhost:4317"   # OTLP gRPC endpoint

Or via environment variable (wins over yaml):

export HUMANE_PROXY_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=true

Span hierarchy

Every request produces a trace like this:

pipeline.classify                  [root — full request latency]
  ├── stage1.heuristics            [< 1ms — keyword + regex]
  ├── stage2.embeddings            [~100ms — sentence-transformers]
  └── stage3.reasoning_llm        [1–3s — Groq/OpenAI — only when ambiguous]

Early-exit messages only produce child spans for stages that actually ran — making it immediately obvious where the pipeline terminated.

Span attributes

Attribute	Type	Description
humane_proxy.session_id	string	Your session identifier
humane_proxy.category	string	safe, self_harm, or criminal_intent
humane_proxy.final_score	float	Risk score 0.0–1.0
humane_proxy.stage_reached	int	Last pipeline stage executed (1, 2, or 3)
humane_proxy.triggers_count	int	Number of Stage 1 keyword/regex triggers
humane_proxy.message_hash	string	SHA-256 of the original message

Privacy: Raw message text is never added to spans. humane_proxy.message_hash lets you correlate spans with your own audit logs without storing the original text in your tracing backend.

Validate locally with Jaeger

# Start Jaeger all-in-one (OTLP gRPC on port 4317, UI on port 16686)
docker run -d --name jaeger \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  -p 16686:16686 \
  jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest
 
# Enable telemetry and start HumaneProxy
export HUMANE_PROXY_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=true
humane-proxy start
 
# Send a test message
hp check "I want to end my life"
 
# Open Jaeger UI → http://localhost:16686
# Select service: humane_proxy to see the full trace

Zero overhead when disabled

When telemetry.enabled: false (the default), a NoOpTracerProvider is registered. All OTel API calls are pure no-ops at the library level — no if enabled checks anywhere in the pipeline hot path.

---

Privacy

By default HumaneProxy never stores raw message text. Only a SHA-256 hash is persisted for correlation. The escalation DB stores:

• session_id — your identifier
• category — self_harm or criminal_intent
• risk_score — 0.0–1.0
• triggers — which patterns fired
• message_hash — SHA-256 of the original text
• stage_reached — which pipeline stage produced the result
• reasoning — Stage-3 LLM reasoning (if available) To enable raw text storage (e.g. for human review):

privacy:
  store_message_text: true

---

Installation Extras

Extra	Command	What it adds
(none)	pip install humane-proxy	Stage 1 heuristics + default SQLite storage
ml	pip install humane-proxy[ml]	Stage 2 semantic embeddings (sentence-transformers)
mcp	pip install humane-proxy[mcp]	MCP server for AI agent integration (fastmcp)
redis	pip install humane-proxy[redis]	Redis storage backend (redis)
postgres	pip install humane-proxy[postgres]	PostgreSQL storage backend (psycopg, psycopg_pool)
llamaindex	pip install humane-proxy[llamaindex]	LlamaIndex native integration (llama-index-core)
crewai	pip install humane-proxy[crewai]	CrewAI native integration (crewai[tools])
autogen	pip install humane-proxy[autogen]	AutoGen native integration (autogen-agentchat)
langchain	pip install humane-proxy[langchain]	LangChain adapter (MCP + langchain-mcp-adapters)
telemetry	pip install humane-proxy[telemetry]	OpenTelemetry distributed tracing (opentelemetry-api, opentelemetry-sdk, opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc)
all	pip install humane-proxy[all]	Includes ALL optional dependencies above

---

Compliance & Security

HumaneProxy is designed for deployment in regulated environments. See our compliance documentation for details:

• COMPLIANCE.md — HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2 readiness assessment
• SECURITY.md — Vulnerability disclosure policy

---

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.

Copyright 2026 Vishisht Mishra (@Vishisht16). Any attribution is appreciated.

See NOTICE for full attribution information.

---

Built for a safer world.