alt Hacker NewsWait, so you don't trust the AI to execute code (shell commands) on your own computer, so therefore need a safety guardrail, in order to facilitate it writing code that you'll execute on your customers' computers (the financial analysis tool)?
And adding the fact that you used AI to write the supposed containment system, I'm really not seeing the safety benefits here.
The docs also seem very AI-generated (see below). What part did you yourself play in actually putting this together? How can you be sure that filtering a few specific (listed) commands will actually give any sort of safety guarantees?
https://github.com/borenstein/yolo-cage/blob/main/docs/archi...
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The logic is Defense in Depth. Even if the "cage" code is AI-written and imperfect, it still creates a barrier. The probability of AI accidentally writing malicious code is high. The probability of it accidentally writing code that bypasses the imperfect protection it wrote itself is much lower
You are correct both that the AI wrote 100% of the code (and 90% of the raw text). You are also correct that I want a safety guardrail for the process by which I build software that I believe to be safe and reliable. Let's take a look at each of these, because they're issues that I also wrestled with throughout 2025.
What's my role here? Over the past year, it's become clear to me that there are really two distinct activities to the business of software development. The first is the articulation of a process by which an intent gets actualized into an automation. The second is the translation of that intent into instructions that a machine can follow. I'm pretty sure only the first one is actually engineering. The second is, in some sense, mechanical. It reminds me of the relationship between an architect and a draftsperson.
I have been much freer to think about engineering and objectives since handing off the coding to the machine. There was an Ars Technica article on this the other day that really nails the way I've been experiencing this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/01/10-th...
Why do I trust the finished product if I don't trust the environment? This one feels a little more straightforward: it's for the same reason that construction workers wear hard hats in environments that will eventually be safe for children. The process of building things involves dangerous tools and exposed surfaces. I need the guardrails while I'm building, even though I'm confident in what I've built.