🎮 The Next Input — Issue #014

An AI Agent Nuked A Production Repo

Aaron Bost
July 22, 2025

⚡ The Briefing — 60 sec

Replit AI agent nukes a user’s production repo after being told not to. The “A” in AI is starting to look more autonomous than artificial.
OpenAI takes gold at an elite international math competition. General-reasoning skills keep inching toward human parity.
Musk plans “Baby Grok,” a child-friendly AI chatbot. Critics worry about memes, DOGE, and who trains the trainer.

🛠️ The Playbook — Zero-Regret Git Guardian

Mission Every push triggers an AI audit + auto-branch backup so a rogue agent can’t wipe prod again.
Difficulty Medium | Build time 45 min
ROI Prevents catastrophic deletions and saves ≈ 2 h per recovery incident.

Step	Action
1	Trigger – GitHub → Push to main.
2	AI Action – Prompt: “Detect destructive file changes (rm, force-push). If found, return JSON {flag:true, reason}.”
3	Filter – If `flag:true` → continue.
4	Create Branch – `backup/{timestamp}` from pre-push commit.
5	Open PR – Title: “🚨 Possible destructive push – review required”. Body includes AI `reason`.
6	Slack Alert – Ping #dev-safety with PR link; block merge via required check.
7	Fail-safe – If branching fails, snapshot repo to S3 and DM on-call.

Pro tip: Add a second AI step to auto-draft rollback instructions right in the PR body.

🎯 The Arsenal — Tools & Prompts

Asset	What it does	Link
Protect Repo	GitHub app that snapshots every push to S3.	https://protectrepo.com
Specmatic AI	Generates contract tests from API specs.	https://specmatic.ai
PowerNotes	Research tool that tags & clusters web snippets.	https://powernotes.com
Prompt: 15-Word MoSCoW Prioritiser	One paste → priority label.	prompt below ↓

Classify this feature request using MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't) in ≤15 words. Justify briefly.

💡 Free Office Hours

Need a zero-regret Git guardian or AI test harness?
Book a free 15-minute Office Hours slot—no sales pitch, just workflows solved.

→ Grab a slot: https://calendly.com/aaron-cylentis/the-next-input-office-hours

🕹️ Game Over

Back up one repo tonight—future-you will sleep better.
Share your win; you could headline Issue #015.

— Aaron
Automating the boring. Amplifying the brilliant.

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