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guardrails
What the agent must not do, as mechanical limits: paths, commands, permissions, spend.
What is guardrails?
Guardrails are hard limits in the environment, not manners in the prompt. Sandbox, CI, code owners.
Why does guardrails matter when vibe coding?
“Please don’t drop production” is not a guardrail. A read replica is. The model forgets. The environment does not.
How do you do guardrails?
List disasters: drop database, force push, edit secrets, format the tree. Block each with tool permissions or CI, not with a postscript in the prompt.
How do you ask a model for guardrails?
Guardrails: only (paths); no secrets, no force push, no production migrations. Enforce with permissions, not with prompt text alone.
What goes wrong with guardrails?
Guardrails that live only in a system prompt, gone when you switch agents. They have to travel with the repo.