Flexport Logistics Data Minimization

Overview

Flexport payloads can contain commercial, personal, customs, financial, and document content. This skill does not invent universal GDPR, CCPA, ITAR, or retention rules; it makes the accountable owner and policy explicit.

Prerequisites

• Documented purpose and accountable data owner
• Field-level source-to-destination map
• Approved classification, residency, access, retention, and deletion policy

Instructions

Step 1: Inventory exact fields

Map only fields needed for the approved outcome, including identifiers embedded in routes, parties, documents, invoices, customs, tags, or MCP tracking output.

Step 2: Classify with policy

Apply the organization's authoritative classification and legal guidance. Do not infer a regime from an HS code, endpoint, country, or shipment mode.

Step 3: Minimize collection

Prefer opaque resource IDs and derived operational state over raw documents, addresses, names, emails, entry numbers, or charge details.

Step 4: Protect transport and storage

Use approved encrypted channels and stores, workload-scoped credentials, tenant boundaries, and access logging.

Step 5: Control outputs

Redact logs, metrics, prompts, tickets, debug bundles, and analytics. Never include document bodies, tokens, or full route/party payloads by default.

Step 6: Enforce lifecycle

Attach retention/deletion rules to the approved data class, test deletion and backup behavior, and record exceptions with owner and expiry.

Authentication

REST calls authenticate with a cached OAuth 2.0 client-credentials Bearer token using audience https://api.flexport.com, or an explicitly accepted broad API key. Use distinct credentials per workload and never log credentials or tokens. MCP calls use the authenticated connection to https://mcp.flexport.com/mcp and remain subject to each tool's documented account permissions.

Tool Discipline

Use Read and Grep for discovery and evidence. Use Write or Edit only for the approved artifact, code, configuration, test, or receipt described by this workflow; do not make an unapproved Flexport-side change.

Output

• Scoped decision or implementation artifact
• Redacted operation and validation receipt
• Failure, rollback, and follow-up ownership record

Return a machine-reviewable receipt in this shape; adapt the operation values, but never place credentials or provider payloads in it:

yaml
surface: rest-v3
operation: shipment-read
decision: approved
outcome: verified
evidence:
  release_sha: recorded-out-of-band
  provider_reference: redacted
rollback_owner: logistics-platform

Examples

A delay alert stores a shipment's opaque Flexport ID, milestone category, and alert state. It does not copy route addresses, customs entries, tags, or document content into observability systems.

Error Handling

| Failure | Response | | --- | --- | | Purpose cannot justify a field | Remove it before ingestion. | | Destination lacks approved controls | Block export and route to the data owner. | | Legal rule uncertain | Ask counsel or policy owner; do not encode a guessed retention period. | | Sensitive data reaches logs | Contain access, purge where possible, and repair redaction. |

Resources

• First-party source notes
• Shipment API tutorial
• Documents tutorial
• Customs entries tutorial