The prompt box is a text field on someone else’s computer. Treat it that way.

Do not paste

  • API keys, passwords, session cookies, private keys
  • Customer PII, health, children’s data
  • Unpublished financials you would not email to a vendor
  • Other people’s manuscripts or private messages
  • Internal hostnames and network maps that do not belong in public writing (including this site)

If the job needs those, it needs a contracted environment, not a consumer chat.

Packs reduce accidents

A context pack with a MUST-NOT and a reviewed folder is safer than “I’ll just paste the env file this once.” Safer is not safe. Safer is fewer 2 a.m. rotations.

If you already pasted

  1. Rotate the credential. Do not argue with the model about whether it “stored” it.
  2. Check vendor retention / training toggles.
  3. Treat downstream systems as possibly logged (support tools, traces, analytics).
  4. Write the incident down so you do not repeat it.

Agents make this worse

Tool traces may echo arguments. Redact. Do not put prod secrets in an agent that logs prompts to a dashboard you have not read the terms for.

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