The Hard Rules Worksheet

Turn your worst AI-build nightmare into two or three rules you will actually follow. Not a pledge, not a values statement: tripwires specific enough that a tired, behind-schedule version of you cannot argue past them.

Picture the wreck

Your AI-assisted build has gone badly wrong three months from now. Not “something broke”: the specific, ugly version. The deleted table. The hallucinated fact that shipped in a changelog. The one-line fix that quietly became a rewrite.

What happened?

Now walk it through. Short answers are fine.

1The moment of discovery

Who tells you, and how?

2The direct cause

What specific action, by the agent or by you approving its output, actually caused the damage?

3The green light

What made it look fine? What check got skipped or waved through?

4The real cost

Hours, dollars, data, trust. Be concrete.

5The tell

Was there a warning sign you noticed and brushed past?

6The last exit

Where was the latest point this could still have been stopped?