DefinitionArticle

There are two safety problems: agents accidentally performing damaging actions like deleting wrong files, and the more worrying one of prompt injection where malicious instructions are smuggled into content an agent consumes.

The author frames the two safety problems auto mode must address: accidental damaging actions (e.g., deleting wrong files, clearing a production DB) and prompt injection, the one they worry about more. ✦ AI generated

The article author · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-08-08 · original ↗

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There are two safety problems that need to be addressed here. The first is agents accidentally performing damaging actions - deleting the wrong files or clearing a production database. The second is the one I worry about more: prompt injection, where someone smuggles malicious instructions to your agent hiding in content that it consumes from elsewhere.

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✳ prompt injection

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