Safety Guard

Safety Guard — Prevent Destructive Operations

When to Use

• When working on production systems
• When agents are running autonomously (full-auto mode)
• When you want to restrict edits to a specific directory
• During sensitive operations (migrations, deploys, data changes)

How It Works

Three modes of protection. They are instructions the agent follows, not enforced blocks (see Enforcement).

Mode 1: Careful Mode

Before it runs a destructive command, the agent stops and warns:

Watched patterns:
- rm -rf (especially /, ~, or project root)
- git push --force
- git reset --hard
- git checkout . (discard all changes)
- DROP TABLE / DROP DATABASE
- docker system prune
- kubectl delete
- chmod 777
- sudo rm
- npm publish (accidental publishes)
- Any command with --no-verify

When detected: shows what the command does, asks for confirmation, suggests safer alternative.

Mode 2: Freeze Mode

Locks file edits to a specific directory tree, for example: "freeze edits to src/components/".

The agent does not Write/Edit outside src/components/, and explains why when a change would need it. Useful when you want an agent to focus on one area without touching unrelated code.

Mode 3: Guard Mode (Careful + Freeze combined)

Both protections active, for example: "guard mode, write only to src/api/, read anything".

The agent can read anything but only writes to src/api/, and asks before any destructive command.

Unlock

Tell the agent to stop applying the rules.

Enforcement

This skill is advisory. ECC ships no /safety-guard command and no hook for it, so nothing blocks a tool call that breaks these rules. For blocking that does not depend on the agent, use Claude Code permission deny rules (for example Bash(rm -rf *)) or a PreToolUse hook.

Integration

• Enable by default for codex -a never sessions
• Pair with observability risk scoring in ECC 2.0