AI Coding Tip 039 - Write Your Own Zeroth Law
Common sense doesn't ship with the model.
TL;DR: Write your own Zeroth Law: an explicit, ranked list of everything the AI can't do.
Common Mistake ❌
You hand the AI a task the same way you'd hand it to a new (human) coworker.
You say clean up this module or deploy this to staging and trust it to infer the same unstated boundaries a person would.
A human fills those gaps with common sense.
Nobody has to tell your coworker not to delete the production database while cleaning up a module.
They already know.
The AI doesn't have that backstop.
It runs on the same permissive default that works fine for humans: everything that isn't forbidden is allowed.
Without common sense filling in the blanks, that default stops being safe.
It breaks the moment the AI has real access to your files, your shell, your secrets, or your accounts.
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