Does Karat Detect AI Tools? Proctoring Guide 2026

Yes, in the way that matters most: a Karat interview is a live, recorded, one-hour session run by a human software engineer who is trained to spot and timestamp the exact behaviors that AI assistance produces. Karat does not run a lockdown browser and does not scan the processes on your computer. It does something harder to beat. It puts a trained engineer on the other side of the call, records the video, the audio and the code playback, and asks a second reviewer to rewatch the session when something looks wrong.

Last checked: September 17, 2026. Every proctoring claim below links to Karat's own documentation. We build InterviewMan, an AI interview assistant, so read the practical advice with that in mind.

Key takeaways:

Karat interviews are conducted by human Interview Engineers, and all interviews are recorded, including "the interview audio and code playback," whether or not your camera is on.

Karat's candidate terms of use require that your answers be "your original work product" and prohibit pasting interview content into "any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated tool" unless Karat directs you to.

The signals Karat trains interviewers to watch for are behavioral, not technical: typing outside the browser window, looking between monitors, and code that appears fully formed with no visible iteration.

Karat does not automatically reject flagged candidates. A flag triggers a second reviewer, and the result is one of three states: No Flags, Integrity Risk, or Violations Confirmed.

Some Karat modules now hand you an AI assistant on purpose. In Karat's own words, "Candidates should be allowed to use AI in technical interviews as it produces better hiring outcomes."

A hidden assistant that a lockdown browser cannot see is still visible in your eyes, your pauses and your explanations. Karat is the platform where technical stealth helps you least.

What Karat is and who uses it

Karat is an interviewing company, not only a testing platform. Companies outsource their first-round and sometimes second-round technical interviews to Karat, and Karat supplies the interviewer. According to Karat's customer FAQ, "Karat interviews are conducted by an Interview Engineer. Interview Engineers (or 'IVEs') are a global community of experienced software engineers available to conduct high quality interviews 24/7." Karat says IVEs need a minimum of three years of experience plus a computer science or engineering degree, and they are screened and trained on Karat's methodology before they run a real interview.

The candidate-facing page describes the format plainly: your interview "will be an hour long," runs in "a fully-toolled IDE," and consists of a brief introduction, "10 min. of discussion questions" and "40 min. of programming questions." At the end, "We'll send the recruiter the video recording of the interview, including a summary that highlights your performance on the questions." Karat also notes that 60% of its interviews are scheduled outside core business hours, which is why so many large employers use it for volume screening.

One caveat on those numbers: Karat's own pages do not agree. A Karat help-center article describes the same interview as a 10 minute deep-dive technical discussion followed by a 45 minute coding challenge, so treat the split as approximate and ask your recruiter for the schedule you will actually get.

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Karat does not publish a customer list on its FAQ page, so we will not invent one. What is documented is the model: a third-party engineer interviews you, and your hiring company reads the report afterwards.

In December 2025 Karat launched what it calls NextGen interviews, a format where you work in a multi-file project with an integrated AI assistant while the Interview Engineer watches how you reason. That matters for this article, and we come back to it below.

What Karat monitors during your interview

Video and audio, recorded end to end

Karat records everything. Its FAQ is explicit: "Regardless of a candidate's decision to appear on camera, all Karat interviews (including the interview audio and code playback) are recorded." Camera use is strongly encouraged but not mandatory, with a caveat that lands harder once you read it twice: a lack of video "may inhibit Karat's ability to complete its quality control process to both ensure fair treatment for candidates and identify any instances of cheating."

Read that as a trade. Turning your camera off removes the eye-movement signal, and it also removes the evidence that would clear you. Karat also states that recordings are "exclusively available for viewing on our platform, but not for download," so a hiring manager reviews your session inside Karat, not as a file passed around.

Code playback, not just the final answer

The phrase "code playback" in Karat's FAQ is the important one. Karat stores the evolution of your code, not the finished snippet. A recruiter or a second reviewer can scrub through the session and watch how the solution appeared on screen. This is the same class of signal that CodeSignal calls edit history, and we cover the equivalent on other platforms in our guide to how companies detect AI cheating in interviews.

A trained human watching for specific behaviors

Karat lists what its interviewers are trained to notice. The FAQ names "typing outside of the browser window without explanation," "frequently looking between monitors," and "writing code in an unusual top-down or line-by-line manner." Karat's own hiring-side guide, How to Tell If a Candidate Is Using AI in an Interview, expands the list into six patterns:

Frequent glancing offscreen or switching windows, which suggests "Referencing another monitor" or "Copying the problem into another tool."
Perfect code with no iteration, because "Real engineers rarely write perfect code in one pass."
Jumping "directly to an optimized solution without explaining their reasoning."
An explanation that does not match the code, or an inability to explain how the code works.
"Entire solutions appearing at once" and inconsistent indentation styles.
No awareness of edge cases, failure scenarios or boundary conditions.

Notice that five of those six are conversational, not technical. They survive any amount of software stealth.

What you agreed to in the terms

The Karat Candidate Terms of Use say Karat may "monitor written content" and "record your answers, audio, video, and platform interactions during the Interview." They also say your answers "must be your original work product," that you may use outside sources only "when and to the extent explicitly directed by your Karat interviewer," and that you must not "input, submit, upload, or otherwise provide any Interview Content to any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated tool" except where Karat directs it.

What Karat cannot see

Being precise here matters more than being reassuring.

Karat, based on its published documentation, does not ship a lockdown browser, does not require you to install a proctoring application, and does not claim to enumerate the processes running on your machine. Nothing in Karat's customer FAQ, candidate page or terms describes process scanning, virtual machine detection or extension detection. That is a meaningful difference from HackerEarth's Smart Browser or Mercer Mettl's Secure Browser, which are installed applications that close other software on your computer.

What Karat has instead is a person and a recording. So the honest statement is this: a native desktop overlay that is excluded from screen capture will not appear in Karat's recording of your shared screen, and a second device sitting off camera is not scanned by any Karat software. But neither of those facts stops an Interview Engineer from noticing that your eyes moved, that your typing paused in the same rhythm every time a question landed, or that you cannot explain the code you just wrote.

Karat also cannot read your mind about intent. It flags behavior, then escalates to a human. That leads to the next section.

How Karat flags suspicious behavior

Karat's process is documented in its Interview Integrity overview. If an Interview Engineer sees something, the interview continues as normal. The IVE "discreetly documents and timestamps the behavior without disrupting the interview." You are not accused live, and you usually will not know it happened.

After the session, suspected cheating triggers a second pass. Karat's FAQ says "the interview will be rewatched and reviewed in its entirety by a second IVE specifically trained in Karat's quality control standards." Only after that review does a result get a label.

There are three states a hiring team can filter on:

No Flags. No integrity concerns detected.
Integrity Risk. Suspicious behavior has been flagged and review is recommended.
Violations Confirmed. Integrity violations have been reviewed and confirmed.

Karat states clearly that it "does not automatically disqualify flagged candidates." The flag is an alert for the hiring team. In practice, an Integrity Risk label on a competitive requisition is often enough to end the process, and Karat's terms say a violation can result in "immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Karat Platform" plus an integrity flag "visible to prospective employers" that Karat may report to those employers.

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That last part is what makes Karat different from a one-off online assessment. Karat runs interviews for many companies. A flag lives on your Karat profile, not only on one application.

What recruiters see in the report

The hiring team receives the video recording plus a performance summary broken down by question, per Karat's candidate page. Layered on top is the integrity state described above, and Karat's interview results overview explains how those results are presented to customers. Reviewers can jump to timestamps the IVE marked.

Practically, this means a recruiter does not have to watch a full hour to check you. They open the flags first, then the timestamps, then the code playback. It is the same review order we see on CodeSignal and HackerRank: the integrity signal is read before the score.

Karat's actual AI policy, in its own words

This is where Karat is more interesting than most platforms, and where a lot of blog advice is out of date.

Karat's customer FAQ says modules vary by customer. Some allow a built-in AI assistant. Some permit external resources, including generative AI. Some prohibit external resources entirely. Interviewers flag "suspected use of any AI tools" in restricted modules, and "inappropriate use of allowed tools" in permitted ones.

Karat's own position on the hiring side is pro-AI. Its guide states that "Candidates should be allowed to use AI in technical interviews as it produces better hiring outcomes," and its NextGen format, launched in December 2025, puts an AI assistant in the environment on purpose while a human watches how you use it.

So the practical question is not "can I sneak AI past Karat." It is "which module am I in, and what did my recruiter tell me." Ask. If the module allows an AI assistant, use the provided one openly and let the interviewer see your reasoning. If it does not, understand that hiding one breaks the terms you accepted. Our broader take on that decision is in Should you use AI in a job interview in 2026? and in our roundup of which companies allow or ban AI in interviews.

Using an AI interview assistant on Karat: what works, what is risky

We will be straight about our own product here, because pretending otherwise would make this article useless.

What is technically true. InterviewMan is a native desktop app, not a browser extension. Its overlay is excluded from screen capture and recording APIs, and it is hidden from the dock, the taskbar and the app switcher. Its two-device Stealth Mode runs the desktop app hidden on the interview machine while answers appear on a phone or a second browser. The full list is documented on our undetectability page. Against a platform that has no process scanner and no lockdown browser, none of that gets picked up by software.

What is risky, specifically on Karat. Karat's detection is a person, and people are good at exactly the signals software misses. Reading answers off a second screen produces the eye pattern Karat names first in its list. Latency before every answer reads as latency. Code that appears whole reads as code that appeared whole. And unlike an automated assessment, an Interview Engineer will ask a follow-up question about your own code, which is where borrowed reasoning falls apart fastest.

What breaks immediately. Anything that lives in the browser tab. Extensions and browser overlays sit inside the window that Karat records, so they show up in the recording. That failure mode is identical to the one we describe for CoderPad.

What we do not claim. InterviewMan does not hide network traffic, does not type or submit answers for you, does not execute code, and does not integrate with proctoring APIs. We report zero confirmed detections across 570,000+ users, and that is a track record, not a guarantee. It is also not a defense against a human asking "why did you choose a hash map here."

The honest recommendation. On Karat specifically, the highest-value use of an assistant is before the interview, not during it. Use an AI mock interview to rehearse the exact 10 minutes of discussion questions and 40 minutes of programming that Karat's format is built around. If you do use live help in a permitted module, use the AI Karat gives you and narrate what you are doing.

How to prepare for a Karat interview honestly

Rehearse out loud, in an IDE, on a timer. Karat gives you 40 minutes of programming in a browser IDE. Practice in that shape, not on paper. Our technical interview preparation guide has a plan you can follow in a week.
Practice narrating. Karat's flags fire on silence: solutions with no reasoning, code you cannot explain. Talking through your approach is both the honest path and the one that removes half the flags.
Do fewer problems, better. Volume grinding is not what Karat measures. See how many LeetCode problems you should actually solve and our 10-step coding interview plan.
Prepare the 10 minutes of discussion. These are experience questions. A short story bank in STAR form covers most of them: see the STAR method guide.
Ask your recruiter about the AI policy. It is a normal question, and the answer changes what is allowed.
Run a full dress rehearsal. Same laptop, same camera position, same lighting, same IDE. Practice interviews with AI get you used to being watched while you think.

How Karat compares to CodeSignal, HackerRank, CoderPad and Codility

Platform	Format	Human watching live	Screen or window capture	Webcam	Desktop-level scan	What usually flags you
Karat	Live 1-hour interview with an engineer	Yes, always	Recording of session and code playback	Encouraged, not required	Not documented	Eye movement, unexplained code, typing outside the window
CodeSignal	Async assessment	No	Screen and webcam recording in AI Proctoring	Yes, with ID check	No	Suspicion Score, edit history, paste events
HackerRank	Async assessment	No	Browser-level proctoring	Optional	No	Tab exits, clipboard events, extension checks
CoderPad	Live pair-programming pad	Yes, your interviewer	Interviewer sees the pad, plus playback	Only via the video call	No	Paste events and playback of typing
Codility	Async assessment	No	Browser events, no full screen capture by default	Optional	No	Tab switching, similarity checks
HackerEarth	Async assessment	No	Records the test window	Snapshots	Yes, via Smart Browser	Lockdown violations, tab switches, plagiarism
Mercer Mettl	Async, often lockdown	Optional live proctor	Screen and camera snapshots every 60 seconds	Yes	Yes, via Mettl Secure Browser	Window violations, phone detection, screen sharing

The pattern is worth stating plainly. Async platforms detect with software. Karat detects with a person. Software stealth is a technical problem with technical answers. A person is not.

Frequently asked questions

Does Karat record my screen?

Karat records the interview session, including audio and code playback, and the video feed if your camera is on. Its FAQ states that all interviews are recorded regardless of whether you appear on camera. Recordings are viewable on Karat's platform and cannot be downloaded.

Can Karat see other applications running on my computer?

Karat does not publish any process scanning, lockdown browser or extension detection capability. Its documented approach is a trained Interview Engineer watching the session plus a recording. That is different from HackerEarth or Mercer Mettl, which ship installed applications that close other software.

Is using AI allowed in a Karat interview?

It depends on the module. Karat says some modules include a built-in AI assistant, some allow external resources including generative AI, and some prohibit outside resources entirely. Karat's candidate terms require your answers to be your original work unless the interviewer directs otherwise, so ask your recruiter which module you are in.

What is a Karat integrity flag and does it disqualify me?

An integrity flag is a marker placed after an interviewer documents suspicious behavior and a second Interview Engineer rewatches the session. Karat states it does not automatically disqualify flagged candidates. There are three states: No Flags, Integrity Risk, and Violations Confirmed, and the hiring team decides what to do.

Does Karat detect a second monitor or a second device?

Not by scanning for hardware. It detects the behavior that using one produces: Karat trains interviewers to watch for "frequently looking between monitors" and "typing outside of the browser window without explanation." The signal is your eyes and your hands, not a device probe.

Will turning my camera off protect me?

It removes one signal and adds another. Karat allows camera-off interviews but warns that missing video "may inhibit Karat's ability to complete its quality control process," which includes clearing you as well as catching cheating. Audio and code playback are still recorded either way.

Do browser extensions get caught on Karat?

Anything that renders inside the browser window appears in the recording of that window, so yes, a visible extension overlay is the easiest thing for a reviewer to spot. This is the same failure mode we describe for CoderPad and CodeSignal.

Does Karat share flags with other companies I apply to?

Karat's terms say a violation may result in an integrity flag "visible to prospective employers," and that Karat may report violations to prospective employers. Because Karat runs interviews for many companies, a flag is attached to your Karat profile rather than to a single application.