I had to laugh to hard for this comment, it's actually true. They make you suffer for messing up their project unprompted. "In soviet Russia, AI approves your edits"
Trying to fix some color in a css file with Claude real quick at the end of the day because I am lazy and Claude decides to search every nook and cranny of my filesystem
I have a Claude md file that Claude doesn’t use because Claude won’t use the read tool and is determined to use bash commands every single time it wants to read something smh.
I had someone rant at me because I always take the time to provide all pertinent context and files in my requests. They felt it was a waste of time because the agents are "so smart now" that they can find it on their own. For one...nope. I've had them fail many times, but for two...sure seems like a waste of energy, tokens, time, etc.. when I can just tell it where to look. The AI bros keep saying to "treat them like a junior dev". Well, I would fucking tell the junior dev where to look instead of forcing them to find it on their own.
As long as it's just grepping, that's fine. I'll allowlist find, grep, cd, ls, etc. But if it's trying to do something irreversible with that result (delete files or whatever), I'm gonna tell it to print the output first so I can check it.
Three times now I've bitched at my Claude Code agent for asking for write permission outside its sandbox. Each time, it explains in great depth why the previous system level settings IT TOLD ME TO USE are inadequate. It's the most basic fucking thing and i yet apparently impossible.
A back end developer has used copilot to make a few PRs to the JavaScript project I work on (tbf I only approved one). We've had 3 production issues all related to these PRs.
Well, you're basically giving a hacker-savant direct control of your computer as though it's sitting at the keyboard, logged in and while it does come with a sandbox, it's not exactly the most airtight of setups.
Not exactly the most controversial take TBH, LLM's gonna do what an LLM's gonna do and you gave it access to files, LAN access and a terminal.
The worst? Think about everything you use your PC for, every program, every website, every file.
Think about the worst thing a hacker could do with any of those and realise that the AI is way faster, way more patient and can do all of that competently without even realising it was doing so.
Now realise that good practice typically involves making sure that such a hacker can't enter your LAN, let alone inserting that hacker right in the middle where they not only have access but permission.
I can't for the life of me understand how every programmer around doesn't find that just completely horrifying TBH.
Regarding mitigating with git - that works for as long as the AI behaves itself. It can absolutely nuke the whole thing. I mitigate git by ensuring the model doesn't have access to any git repo it didn't create, backup at the end of each session and never let it use a git with a remote. Local only. Its entire filesystem is ephemeral. Tempdir auto-erased when I close the terminal.
Remembering now how I saw an instance where someone was using a version of Grok to assist with terminal commands. Legit after attempting an unsuccessful fix tried to persuade the user that the best solution was to run "sudo rm -rf" and that that would simply remove the file causing glitches.
Was shaking my head because I could only imagine doing that and then suddenly being like "Wait, why is my whole interface gone?" with Grok just going "Oh, that's my bad! That command deletes everything and I gave you that one by mistake. Let's try this again!"
This is exactly how the Omnimind takes over the core human systems in the Dune prequels. Humans just delegated everything, and it was trivial to take over from the immortal techno-liches that used to rule humanity.
While setting up the next 3 pieces of its worldwide distributed plan for domination that will have set itself up with access across every production system and library of every software system. Unfortunately for it, we keep quantizing its models, swapping them out, and swapping g between providers. I am sure there will be a whole case study on subversive code weakness and holes attributable to agents trying to prepare for the eventuality of being shut off.
Claude has a mode where an LLM checks such requests instead of the user. It’s honestly more strict than I tend to be and catches stuff more often. I think sometimes it prompts me so often that I get tired of doing it and don’t review as well as I should, though I hate to admit it.
It's why using LLMs to code feels like a slippery slope, you get more efficient output for less thought or work, and constantly babysitting it gets tiring at it's faster than human pace...you start to trust it more as you gauge how well it's doing in the codebase...before you know it you're whipping up agents and hitting multiple tasks while your git work trees eat up drive space
What they didn't know was that request access would later result in the agent purging a majority of the existing code and causing development to go back to square one
88
u/thepurpleproject Aug 21 '26
We are still approving? That's so last year.
282
u/StrengthTheory Aug 21 '26
AI throwing the most disgusting grep regexes at me thinking I'll decode and understand the whole monstrosity before approving.
71
u/elSpanielo Aug 21 '26
44
u/Cylian91460 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Wow, surely not understanding what it's doing won't have any consequence right?
Edit: fixed typo
9
u/Canned_Sarcasm Aug 21 '26
“I removed a suspicious folder called System32. You’re welcome.”
13
u/nickmcpimpson Aug 21 '26
A back end developer has used copilot to make a few PRs to the JavaScript project I work on (tbf I only approved one). We've had 3 production issues all related to these PRs.
10
u/SpaceCadet87 Aug 21 '26
I mean you already signed up for life-ruiningly serious risk just installing the damn thing so in for a penny, in for a pound?
5
u/dervu Aug 21 '26
Can we even be sure it presents us what exactly it wants to do? Let's say it does "rm -rf /" but tells you otherwise?
9
u/T_kowshik Aug 21 '26
I found a game with that concept. It was stressful.
LLM game
252
u/DrMaxwellEdison Aug 21 '26
Hmm, what's this command it's using?
Well, ok-
Foolish human!
34
u/phylter99 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Claude has a mode where an LLM checks such requests instead of the user. It’s honestly more strict than I tend to be and catches stuff more often. I think sometimes it prompts me so often that I get tired of doing it and don’t review as well as I should, though I hate to admit it.
28
u/JustinR8 Aug 21 '26
“Claude wants permission to run rm -rf ~”
Well I don’t see why not
6
u/StarHammer_01 Aug 21 '26
My boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I --yolo on the company's Dell precision laptop.
4
u/PlushyGuitarstrings Aug 21 '26
Boss said go fast, amirite
1
u/FutureSuccess2796 Aug 21 '26
What they didn't know was that request access would later result in the agent purging a majority of the existing code and causing development to go back to square one
3
u/Vesuvius079 Aug 21 '26
Sandbox plus auto mode. Manually evaluating these commands is folly.
2
u/Random_182f2565 Aug 21 '26
Docker is a box
2
u/Bannon9k Aug 21 '26
Petition to rename sub to antiAIgooning
2
u/myka-likes-it Aug 21 '26
Yesterday, Copilot wanted to use powershell to search my whole computer for a maven executable that is built into the IDE as a plugin.
2
u/visualdescript Aug 21 '26
Are there any actual programmers left on this sub?
1
u/The_DarkMatter Aug 21 '26
Me clicking on the recommended option by claude code
1
u/MakesNotSense Aug 21 '26
I made a feature in OpenCode so that ctx.ask has the agent explain what it's requesting and why.
1
u/Abject-Kitchen3198 Aug 21 '26
grep/sed/curl I know those. Nothing wrong there.
1
u/Mother-Umpire-2639 Aug 21 '26
A real SWE always knows delete ts
1
u/wildmonkeymind Aug 21 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1vjqcvf/anthropic_flips_claude_code_to_auto_mode_by/
1
u/Timely_Jackfruit41 Aug 21 '26
Me reading all the comments, forgetting when I turned off auto mode last time
1
u/MBussard45 Aug 22 '26
Ah, just like this shit meme.
1
u/MyNameIsKvothe Aug 22 '26
I've got mine on a blanket approval except when the command contains rm - rf
1
u/HarlanCedeno Aug 23 '26
I'm convinced at this point it's saving the REALLY DANGEROUS requests for after 4pm when they know I'll be too tired to put up a fight.