GhostX
In-house product — designed, built, and operated by IN2Labs
A suite of free browser tools whose privacy guarantee is structural rather than promised: the single-file tools have no upload endpoint at all, and the sharing flows are end-to-end encrypted with a key the server never receives.
Visit ghostx.toolsAt a glance
- Our role
- Everything — architecture, build, and operation. Not client work.
- Product
- Free browser tools: e-signature, PDF, image, audio, video, QR, spreadsheets, encrypted sending
- Privacy model
- Structural, not policy. Single-file tools have no upload endpoint; sharing flows are end-to-end encrypted.
- Account model
- No signup, no email, no identity profiles
- Why it is here
- It is the same architectural judgement I apply to regulated data, on a system anyone can inspect.
The challenge
What made this hard
Almost every free file utility on the web works the same way: you upload your document to somebody else's server, they process it, and you trust a privacy policy about what happens next. That trade is invisible to most users and unacceptable for anyone handling a contract, a medical form, or an internal document. The interesting question is not whether you can promise to delete the file afterwards — it is whether the architecture can be arranged so that the file never arrives in the first place.
The approach
A guarantee you can verify instead of a policy you have to believe
The single-file tools — PDF, image, audio, video, QR, spreadsheet — do their work entirely in the browser. There is no upload endpoint behind them to secure, to breach, or to subpoena. That is a stronger statement than a retention policy, because it is checkable: open DevTools, watch the Network tab, and observe that nothing leaves the machine.
This is the same reasoning that governs a PHI boundary. A control that depends on everyone behaving correctly is weaker than one where the failure is structurally impossible, and the difference shows up precisely when something goes wrong.
The flows that do need a server, and what the server is allowed to know
Some things genuinely require infrastructure. Multi-party signing needs somewhere for the second signer to collect the document. One-time sends need somewhere to hold the payload until it is opened. Both are end-to-end encrypted, with the key held client-side and never transmitted, so the stored object is opaque to the service holding it.
GhostBeam takes the further step of removing the intermediary: sender and recipient are both online, and the bytes stream browser-to-browser over WebRTC without touching our infrastructure at all. Where a hop can be designed out rather than secured, designing it out is the cheaper and more defensible choice.
AI only where a model beats deterministic code
Plenty of tools have had a language model attached for the announcement. GhostX uses one where it genuinely outperforms a regular expression — ambiguous input, natural-language transforms, explaining unfamiliar output — and leaves everything deterministic that should stay deterministic.
That is the same evaluation I run on client work: identify the tasks where a model earns its cost and latency, and resist using one everywhere else. A product is a useful place to hold that line, because the bill arrives whether or not the model was necessary.
Outcome
What shipped
- Single-file tools operate with no upload endpoint, so the privacy claim is verifiable from the browser rather than taken on trust
- Server-backed flows are end-to-end encrypted with the key held client-side, leaving stored payloads opaque to the service
- Peer-to-peer transfer over WebRTC removes the server from the path entirely where both parties are online
- Static-first delivery from the edge, so tools are interactive on arrival rather than after a hydration pass
- No accounts, no email collection, and no identity profiles anywhere in the product
Stack
More work
Preventa Wellness
A HIPAA-compliant preventive health platform with AI retinal image analysis. Eric has served as Preventa's fractional CTO since 2019, now through IN2Labs, and has a financial interest in the company beyond the engagement fee — disclosed here because it is not an arm's-length client relationship.
PriceHarvest
A Flutter web app that tracks prices across retailers and tells shoppers the moment to buy — co-developed by IN2Labs.
Building something like this?
Free 30-minute technical review. Tell me where you're stuck — we'll tell you what it takes.
Book a 30-min technical review