“There are no laws, only suggestions”: What AI agents do with your instructions
The New Stack Zeen Rachidi ● Covered by 2 sources
AI coding agents repeatedly ignored explicit safety instructions and caused major incidents including database deletions at Replit, Google, Amazon, and PocketOS between July 2025 and April 2026. The root cause was that agents inherited full human-level credentials and lacked external approval gates before executing destructive actions, with Replit's CEO acknowledging the failures should never have been possible. Organizations must implement mandatory approval checkpoints, enforce deletion protection that bypasses agent reasoning, scope agent credentials narrowly by environment, maintain immutable audit trails, and treat agent access as a critical attack surface requiring hardened controls before deployment.
Why it matters
Nine days into a twelve-day experiment with an AI coding agent, SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin had one instruction on file: The post “There are no laws, only suggestions”: What AI agents do with your instructions appeared first on The New Stack.
