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Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

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Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#61

Post by abustamam »

petcat wrote: post #41
xmodem wrote: post #16

An engineer recklessly ran untrusted code directly in a production environment. And then told on himself on Twitter.

From the article, it sounds like that engineer did a lot of other reckless things even before handing the tasks over to the AI agent to continue the recklessness with even more abandon. This is a case study in "if you don't know what you're doing, the answer is not just to hand it over to some AI bot to do it for you." The answer is to hire a professional. That is if you care about your data, or even just your reputa…

Yeah I always considered AI to be an accelerator. If you don't know what you're doing and would break stuff without Ai, AI will just accelerate that.

Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#64

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

petcat wrote: post #41
xmodem wrote: post #16

An engineer recklessly ran untrusted code directly in a production environment. And then told on himself on Twitter.

From the article, it sounds like that engineer did a lot of other reckless things even before handing the tasks over to the AI agent to continue the recklessness with even more abandon. This is a case study in "if you don't know what you're doing, the answer is not just to hand it over to some AI bot to do it for you." The answer is to hire a professional. That is if you care about your data, or even just your reputa…

> before handing the tasks over to the AI agent to continue the recklessness with even more abandon

Which is a funny outcome of this because apparently the AI agent (Claude) tried to talk him out of doing some of the crazy stuff he wanted to do! Not only did he make bad decisions before invoking the AI, he even ignored and overruled the agent when it was flagging problems with the approach.

Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#67

Post by BitsAndObjects »

No staging environment?

No prior attempt to follow best practices (e.g. deletion protection in production)? Nor manual gating of production changes?

No attempt to review Claude's actions before performing them?

No management of Terraform state file?

No offline backups?

And to top it off, Claude (the supposed expert tool) didn't repeatedly output "Are you insane? No, I'm not working on that." - Clearly Claude wasn't particularly expert else, like any principal engineer, it would've refused and suggested sensible steps first.

(If you, dear reader of this comment, are going to defend Claude, first you need to declare whether you view it as just another development tool, or as a replacement for engineers. If the former, then yeah, this is user error and I agree with you - tools have limits and Claude isn't as good as the hyped-up claims - clearly it failed to output the obvious gating questions. If the latter, then you cannot defend Claude's failure to act like a senior engineer in this situation.)

Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#68

Post by fragmede »

nine_k wrote: post #51
levkk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the tool gets better, people trust it more. It's like Tesla's self-driving: "almost" works, and that's good enough for people to take their hands off the wheel, for better or for worse. The "almost" part of automation is the issue + the marketing attached to it of course, to make it a product people want to buy. This is the expected outcome and is already priced in.

I would say the opposite here. The perpetrator has rejected multiple Claude's warnings about bad consequences, and multiple Claude's suggestions to act in safer ways. It reminds me of an impatient boss who demands that an engineer stopped all this nonsense talk about safety, and just did the damn thing quick and dirty. Those guys who blew up the Chernobyl NPP also had to deliberately disable multiple safety check sys…

I view it more as "I crashed my car, I should have been wearing my seat belt, wear yours!"

Source: had codex delete my entire project folder including .git. Thankfully I had a backup.

Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#69

Post by mnky9800n »

fragmede wrote: post #55
stavarotti wrote: post #45

If you found this post helpful, follow me for more content like this. I publish a weekly newsletter where I share practical insights on data and AI. It focuses on projects I'm working on + interesting tools and resources I've recently tried: https://alexeyondata.substack.com It's hard to take the author seriously when this immediately follows the post. I can only conclude that this post was for the views not anything…

It's hard to take you take seriously. His blog has a generic "read more" footer and that's a demerit worth mentioning? What do serious people in your world that write blogs do? Not want people to read their other content? In what world do you live in that writers (serious or not) don't want you to read their other work?

Some people seem think that self promotion is wrong and work should stand on its own merits. I don’t think this way. It’s important to think about engaging and attracting eyes to your ideas. If you don’t why bother sharing them?

Re: Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command

#70

Post by groby_b »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #67

No staging environment? No prior attempt to follow best practices (e.g. deletion protection in production)? Nor manual gating of production changes? No attempt to review Claude's actions before performing them? No management of Terraform state file? No offline backups? And to top it off, Claude (the supposed expert tool) didn't repeatedly output "Are you insane? No, I'm not working on that." - Clearly Claude wasn't p…

Best part: The guy's "training engineers to use AI in production environments".

And it's not all Claude Code - loved the part where he decided, mid disaster recovery, that that would be a good time to simplify his load balancers.

It's a case of just desserts.

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