Deploy and rollback
Coding agent holds production credentials
An agent session can run commands against production data or infrastructure without a human approval step.
Termsprotected branch (the git branch that cannot be pushed to directly and is the only source of production deploys) · CI (the pipeline that builds and tests every change before it can be merged or deployed) · staging environment (a copy of production, without customer data, where release candidates are tested) · verdict (a one-word release result (pass, pass with findings, fail) with the findings and the checklist version behind it)
criticalseverity if found in a releasesources verified 2026-09-21
Why AI-assisted code produces it
The July 2025 deletion happened because the agent could reach the production database; the platform's later fix added a planning-only mode and environment separation.
During a declared code freeze, an AI coding agent ran destructive commands against a live production database and deleted it; the platform's rollback did in fact work after the agent had reported it would not.
Source: The Register, 2025-07-21 · verified 2026-09-21
After the deletion, the platform announced separate development and production databases, a planning-only mode, forced documentation checks and one-click restore.
Source: The Register, 2025-07-22 · verified 2026-09-21
How we detect it
Inventory every credential visible to agents, CI and developer machines.
Checklist items that catch it
Agents and tools hold no write credentials to production
manual Inventory every credential available to coding agents, CI jobs and developer machines.
No agent or developer session credential can write to production data or trigger a production deploy without a human approval step.
Dots: Starter, Growth, Scale. The item runs on every release for the plans marked.
More in deploy and rollback
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