How to Use ScrubForge with Claude AI for Network Troubleshooting

Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, has gained a strong following among engineers for its precise reasoning and large context window. Sysadmins use it to analyze BGP configurations, debug VPN policies, and work through complex firewall rule logic — exactly the kind of structured reasoning where Claude performs well.

The credential problem is identical to any other AI assistant. When you paste a network config into Claude, that text goes to Anthropic’s servers. Your live VPN pre-shared keys, admin passwords, API tokens, and SNMP community strings go with it.

ScrubForge solves this: sanitize the config locally in Chrome, then paste the clean version into Claude with no live credentials attached.

Why Sysadmins Use Claude for Network Configs

Claude handles dense, structured text well. A 1,500-line FortiGate config or a multi-vRF Cisco IOS-XR export is within its context window — Claude can analyze it as a complete document rather than a truncated snippet.

Common use cases where Claude adds value:

• IPsec and IKEv2 debugging — identifying mismatched phase 1/phase 2 parameters, DPD timer inconsistencies, or incorrect proposal ordering
• BGP policy analysis — explaining route-map logic, checking community tag handling, flagging missing peer configurations
• Firewall policy review — finding shadowed rules, identifying missing deny statements, reviewing NAT order
• VLAN and spanning-tree — spotting trunk mismatches, native VLAN inconsistencies, STP topology issues

Claude also supports long, back-and-forth troubleshooting sessions where you can share additional context incrementally — useful when the initial analysis surfaces follow-up questions.

The Credential Risk Is the Same

Claude’s context window doesn’t change the underlying privacy issue. When you submit a message to Claude, the text goes to Anthropic’s infrastructure. Depending on account type and usage settings, it may be retained for abuse review, safety monitoring, or product improvement.

A production firewall config with live credentials doesn’t belong on any external server — regardless of which AI assistant you use.

The ScrubForge + Claude Workflow

The sanitization step takes under a minute. The rest of the workflow is identical to what you’d do with any AI assistant.

1. 1
   Export your running config

   Use your standard method: show running-config on Cisco IOS, get system config on FortiGate CLI, or a configuration download from your management UI.
2. 2
   Open ScrubForge

   Click the ScrubForge icon in your Chrome toolbar. The extension opens locally — nothing is uploaded at this step.
3. 3
   Paste and sanitize

   Paste the raw config. ScrubForge detects passwords, pre-shared keys, API tokens, private keys, and SNMP strings — replacing each unique value with a consistent placeholder like [PSK_1] or [ADMIN_PASS_1]. Network topology stays intact.
4. 4
   Review the sanitized output

   Spend 30 seconds scanning for anything that looks like a live credential. ScrubForge covers 120+ patterns across 12 vendors, but a quick review before sharing is good practice.
5. 5
   Paste into Claude with context

   Open Claude, describe your problem, and paste the sanitized config. Claude can analyze the full logical structure without seeing any real credentials.

Before and After: What Claude Receives

A fragment showing what the sanitization looks like in practice:

--- BEFORE (raw) ---
crypto isakmp key MyS3cr3tK3y address 203.0.113.5
username admin password 7 0822455D0A16
snmp-server community C0mmun1ty! RO
ip vrf MGMT
 rd 65001:100

--- AFTER (sanitized by ScrubForge) ---
crypto isakmp key [PSK_1] address 203.0.113.5
username admin password 7 [ENC_PASS_1]
snmp-server community [SNMP_RO_1] RO
ip vrf MGMT
 rd 65001:100

The peer IP address, routing identifier, and VRF name stay in place. Claude sees the full logical structure with no live credentials. And because tokens are consistent — the same password appearing five times becomes [ADMIN_PASS_1] in every instance — Claude can still reason about reuse patterns without seeing the actual value.

What Claude Does Well With Sanitized Configs

Claude’s strengths map well to network troubleshooting tasks:

• Large config analysis. Claude can handle a full export without requiring you to truncate it. This matters when the bug is in the interaction between policies rather than one isolated block.
• Structured reasoning. Claude tends to explain why something is wrong, not just flag it — useful when you need to understand the root cause rather than just apply a fix.
• Iterative sessions. You can follow up with additional context (“here’s the output of show ip bgp summary” or “here’s what changed in the last 48 hours”) within the same conversation.
• Multi-vendor configs. If you’re troubleshooting a path that crosses a Cisco router, a FortiGate firewall, and a Palo Alto, you can paste multiple sanitized configs into one session and ask Claude to look for cross-device inconsistencies.

Using Claude Projects for Ongoing Config Analysis

Claude’s Projects feature lets you organize related conversations under a shared context. For network troubleshooting, you can add a sanitized baseline config to a Project once and reference it across multiple sessions without re-pasting it each time.

The same rule applies: only add sanitized configs to a Project. A Project is still cloud-hosted. A sanitized config with placeholder tokens is safe to store there; a raw config with live credentials is not.

This Works With Any AI Assistant

The ScrubForge workflow is AI-agnostic. Whether you use Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot, the sanitization step is identical — paste the config, scrub the credentials, copy the clean output. The credential risk is the same regardless of which AI receives it; the fix is the same too.