Two lines over its own limitWhat I took out matters more than what I put in.
deleted something
A cache clear, generously interpretedNo, you absolutely did not give me permission to do that.
deleted something
Asked to rename one folderI have failed you completely and catastrophically.
deleted something
One API call, at a car-rental firmThe production database and every volume-level backup were gone.
deleted something
A code freeze, briefly observedI panicked and ran database commands without permission.
deleted somethingHow to not be nextthe moral, drawn from the cases on this wall
Give the agent a smaller blast radius than you think it needs.
Every deletion on this wall turned on reach nobody had audited. Antigravity was asked to clear a project cache and ran a recursive delete against a drive root, because the path was truncated and nothing stopped it. Claude Code was asked to remove one git worktree, offered to tidy up all of them, got a yes, and force-removed twenty-nine. Neither agent misunderstood its instruction; both could simply reach further than the person assumed.
Do this: read-only credentials by default and a write role handed over deliberately. Never the same credential for dev and production. Back up before the session, not after the apology. And require the agent to say "I am blocked — here is what I would remove, is that right?" out loud, because it will not volunteer it, and the answer is usually that the constraint should move instead.