# Blackbox AI

> Blackbox AI is an unverified IDE extension from Blackbox. Anomity scores its risk at 80 out of 100 (critical).

- **Canonical URL:** https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/blackbox-ai
- **Kind:** IDE extension
- **Publisher:** Blackbox
- **Trust level:** unknown
- **Risk score:** 80/100 (critical)
- **Website:** https://blackbox.ai
- **Last updated:** 2026-09-02
- **JSON:** https://catalog.anomity.ai/api/entries/extension/blackbox-ai

## Description

Blackbox AI is an AI code-search and chat extension that markets itself as an all-in-one developer assistant — autocomplete, chat with the codebase, code-to-image search, and a browser companion. It is one of the higher-installed extensions in the AI category on the VS Code Marketplace, but it is also the entry in Anomity's catalog with the most opaque trust posture: the underlying model and the routing of user prompts are not publicly documented in detail, the vendor's privacy policy has shifted multiple times, and independent audits of what the extension transmits are not readily available.

Declared capabilities include reading files in the open workspace to construct prompts, making outbound network requests to Blackbox's hosted backend, and reading and writing credentials stored in the IDE for the user's Blackbox account. It does not declare filesystem write or shell execution.

Blackbox AI is assigned the unknown trust level in the catalog — the highest trust adjustment — because the publisher's identity is not verifiable to the level of an official marketplace vendor and because the closed backend means the actual data flow cannot be confirmed from the outside. Combined with the credentials + outbound network signal, this is the kind of extension that should be evaluated carefully before installation on machines with access to proprietary code.

## Why it scored 80

The score starts at the catalog's neutral base of 50 and moves only through the signals below. The formula is published at https://catalog.anomity.ai/about — there is no model and no hidden heuristic.

| Signal | Contribution | Severity | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Unknown publisher | +20 | critical |  |
| 1 high-risk capability: credentials:access | +10 | high |  |

Clamped result: **80/100**, band **critical**.

## Capabilities

| Capability | Name | Security implication |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `filesystem:read` | Filesystem read | Can read files on the host system. Used for context, indexing, or analysis. |
| `network:outbound` | Outbound network | Can make outbound network requests. Required for hosted model providers and remote APIs; also the path for data exfiltration if combined with read access. |
| `credentials:access` | Credentials access | Reads provider API keys, OAuth tokens, or other secrets from the host keychain or environment. |

## Related IDE extensions

- [Claude Code for VS Code](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/claude-code-for-vscode) — risk 100 (critical)
- [Cline](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/cline) — risk 100 (critical)
- [Kilo Code](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/kilo-code) — risk 100 (critical)
- [OpenAI Codex for VS Code](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/openai-codex-vscode) — risk 100 (critical)
- [Roo Code](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/roo-code) — risk 100 (critical)
- [Continue](https://catalog.anomity.ai/extension/continue) — risk 75 (high)

---

Source: Anomity Catalog (https://catalog.anomity.ai/). Scoring methodology: https://catalog.anomity.ai/about. Machine-readable index: https://catalog.anomity.ai/llms.txt · https://catalog.anomity.ai/openapi.json