FAQ¶

ASHA v0.4.2

General¶

What is ASHA?¶

A drop-in layer that masks PII, checks prompt injection patterns, and compresses tokens before prompts reach LLM providers.

Is it production-ready?¶

For pinned pilots: yes, with monitoring. Architecture is complete in 0.4.2. For stable semver: not until 1.0.0. Use asha==0.4.2 and read developer-preview.md.

Python version?¶

3.10+ (3.10, 3.11, 3.12 in CI).

API¶

What can I import from the root?¶

from asha import process, sanitize, optimize, Agent

Nothing else - no wrap_llm, Pipeline, or Processor at root.

Where is wrap_llm?¶

from asha.integrations import wrap_llm

What does process() return?¶

A ProcessResult dataclass. str(result) returns result.output.

Does process() raise?¶

mode="balanced" (default): fail-open - degraded fallback, result.degraded=True
mode="strict": raises ASHAProcessingError on total failure

How do I get metrics?¶

result = process("prompt")
print(result.metrics.token_reduction_pct)
print(result.security.pii_detected)

No return_metrics=True - use typed fields.

How do I set pii_mode or reversible?¶

from asha.core.policy_config import PolicyConfig
process(prompt, policy=PolicyConfig(pii_mode="hybrid", reversible=True))

Top-level pii_mode= on process() raises TypeError.

Modes¶

Mode	Description
`balanced`	Default - security + optimization
`strict`	Fail-closed
`lite`	Minimal policy features
`off`	Passthrough

Performance¶

Token reduction?¶

Typically 5-15% on verbose prompts. Already-short prompts may see little change. See benchmarks.md.

Speed?¶

Roughly 20-80 ms for rule-based PII on typical prompts. Use mode="lite" or mode="off" for lower latency.

Security¶

What PII is detected?¶

Emails, phones, SSNs, credit cards, API keys, JWTs, IPs, and more. See security.md.

ASHA is privacy tooling, not a certified compliance product. See compliance.md.

Agent¶

Key parameters?¶

model, privacy, token_budget, provider, routing_config, local_model, sample_prompts.

What does run() return?¶

String by default. AgentResult when trace=True.

Removed in v0.4.1¶

Removed	Use instead
`Pipeline`, `Processor`	`process()` or `PromptProcessor`
Root `wrap_llm`	`asha.integrations.wrap_llm`
`security_fail_closed=`	`mode="strict"`
`return_metrics=True`	`result.metrics`
`ModelRouter`	`Agent(routing_config=...)`

Full list: deprecations.md.