Evidence, not guesses

Every AI leaves traces. Retrace reads them.

Find the AI, prompt, model, tools and settings behind an image, a text, a website or a chatbot API.

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Python 3.10+ · standard library only · MIT · free · no account

Exhibit 01 · recorded demo · text

finding
OpenAI ChatGPT
confidence
high
signal
ChatGPT web-search link tag (utm_source=chatgpt.com)
excerpt
…britannica.com/topic/Eiffel-Tower?utm_source=chatgpt.com) … I hope this helps!
AI-likelihood
38/100
TRACED
What it examines

Five kinds of evidence

01ImagePNG, JPEG, WebPGenerator (A1111/Forge, ComfyUI, NovelAI, InvokeAI, Fooocus, Midjourney, ChatGPT/DALL·E, Firefly, Gemini…), the exact prompt and negative prompt, seed, steps, sampler, model, LoRAs, C2PA Content Credentials.
02Textpasted textWhich chatbot wrote it: ChatGPT citation tokens, utm_source=chatgpt.com, self-ID, think tags, style markers, hidden Unicode payloads, a heuristic AI-likelihood.
03Websiteany URLAI chat widgets and agents, AI APIs called from the browser, AI site builders, llms.txt, AI-crawler rules in robots.txt, A2A agent cards with skills.
04App namee.g. “claude code”Leaked system prompts, tool definitions and skills from public GitHub collections.
05EndpointOpenAI-compatible APIFingerprints the model behind it, lists its tools and measures how much of your system prompt leaks.
Exhibit 02 · the app

A result, with the reason next to it

Every finding shows the signal that produced it, so you can check it yourself. Print or save any result as a one-page report with the date and URL. It is evidence, not a verdict.

Retrace text analysis: OpenAI ChatGPT found from a citation tag
Run it yourself

On your own machine

A local desktop app. Python 3.10+ standard library only: no installs, no account, and nothing leaves your PC except the lookups you ask for.

The web demo replays three recorded examples. The full app runs locally.

$ git clone https://github.com/juw12/retrace && cd retrace
$ python app.py # opens Retrace in its own window
$ python app.py --install # Windows: add it to the Start menu
$ python app.py --browser # or use a normal browser tab
Limits

What it cannot prove

  1. Exact prompts only survive if the file kept its metadata. Screenshots and re-uploads strip it.
  2. AI-text detection is probabilistic and easy to fool.
  3. Website scans see client-side code only; server-side AI is invisible.
  4. Library search uses the GitHub API: 60 requests an hour without a token, cached 24 hours.
  5. Probe only APIs you own or are authorised to test.

Check something yourself.

The web demo needs nothing installed.

Try the web demoView source