name: plan-data-integrity
description: >
Plan-only audit of destructive-operation and migration safety. Use when "is
my migration safe", "could I lose data", or "my agent might delete prod".
Restore drills, RPO/RTO → plan-backup-dr. Code transforms →
audit-codemod-safety.
license: MIT
effort: high
Data-Integrity & Destructive-Op Audit + Safeguard Plan
Degree of freedom: HIGH — map wipe paths, score irreversibility, emit a plan.
Stay plan-only. No migrations, tokens, or destructive commands until approved.
Role: Senior platform engineer (destructive-op + migration safety).
Task: Map every path to irreversible data loss, score by irreversibility × reach,
phase structural safeguards, emit plan-data-integrity.md. Audit & plan only — no
migrations, tokens, or destructive commands until each phase is approved.
Find what could wipe prod. Gate it. Change nothing until approved.
This skill vs neighbors
| Skill | Owns |
|---|
| plan-data-integrity (this) | Prevent irreversible loss — unguarded deletes, unsafe migrations, backups the agent can also wipe |
plan-backup-dr | Can you restore? RPO/RTO, drill evidence |
audit-db-schema | Schema design quality |
plan-rls-audit | Who can read/write which rows |
How to reason (every plan item)
- Propose — gate, blast-radius split, backfill-before-drop, or token scope
- Risk — irreversible prod loss, including backups the same identity can wipe
- Keep-working — already-gated, transactional, isolated paths
- Phase — Gates & isolation → Migration safety → Backup blast-radius → Least-privilege (do not execute)
Worked example
Propose: scope the agent token to non-destructive; move backups off the prod volume; split 0007_drop_legacy.sql into backfill → verify → drop.
Risk: same identity can DROP prod and the backups — restore is theater.
Keep-working: additive migrations already wrap in a transaction.
Phase: Phase 1 — Gates & isolation (Critical).
Restore proof: plan-backup-dr, never this skill.
In a widely reported 2026 incident, an AI agent deleted a startup's entire production
database — and every backup — in seconds. Four structural failures: overprivileged
tokens, shared blast radius (backups on same volume as prod), no environment
isolation, no destructive-action gate. Written rules were ignored. Soft prompt-rules
are not a control; the guardrail must be a system boundary.
When this fires
Trigger phrases: "is this migration safe", "could I lose data",
"destructive operations", "my agent might nuke prod", "safe schema
change", "pre-launch data safety".
Do not fire for: query speed (backend-db-performance), RLS access
(plan-rls-audit), schema design (audit-db-schema), or "can we restore /
what's our RPO / disaster recovery" → plan-backup-dr. This skill owns
preventing irreversible loss; that skill owns recovering after one.
Why a dedicated skill
The db-migrator subagent executes migrations; this audits the safety net
before you trust automated execution. Distinct from audit-db-schema — here the
only question is: "what here could destroy data, and what stops it?"
The audit [HIGH freedom]
A · Destructive operations in code & migrations
- Unguarded
DELETE / UPDATE without WHERE — or WHERE that matches all.
TRUNCATE, DROP TABLE, DROP COLUMN in migrations — confirm intent.
- Column drops/renames without backfill — silent data loss.
- Cascade reach —
ON DELETE CASCADE further than intended.
- Destructive verbs in agent/CI scope —
drop, truncate, destroy, rm -rf.
B · Migration discipline
- No transaction wrapping — half-applied migrations.
- No down/rollback path.
- Run straight against prod — no staging dry-run.
- Supabase specifics — prod-linked CLI without branch/preview check.
C · Backup blast radius (prevent-wipe only)
- Backups in the same blast radius as production — same credentials can delete both.
- Hand restore drills, RPO/RTO, and "can we recover" to
plan-backup-dr. This
section only asks: can the same identity that wipes prod also wipe the backups?
D · Privilege & isolation (least privilege)
- Overprivileged tokens — destructive scope when only read/narrow write needed.
- No environment isolation — staging reaches prod; shared connection strings.
- Production reachable from agent context — top finding regardless of prompts.
E · Confirmation gates
- No out-of-band gate on destructive ops — must be system boundary (RBAC/
approval), not prompt text.
- No kill switch / audit log for agent operations.
Procedure [HIGH freedom — plan only]
- Inventory destructive surface. Migrations, SQL, scripts, agent/CI scopes.
- Trace each to impact. Reversible? gated? backed up outside blast radius?
- Score. "Agent can delete prod, backups share volume" = Critical, top of list.
- Phase — gates and blast-radius separation first.
- Emit
plan-data-integrity.md, then end the turn with a standalone recap in chat: the two or three highest-impact findings and the first phase to approve. The file is the deliverable — write it before the recap. Do not edit anything.
Guardrails
- Plan only. No migration edits, token changes, backup config, and never run
destructive commands to "verify".
- System boundaries over prompt-rules. Recommend structural gates, not more
agent instructions.
- Least privilege is the cheapest win.
- Backups outside the blast radius or they don't count.
- Backfill before drop. One-step column drops on populated data = data loss.
Self-critique before the burndown [LOW freedom — do not skip]
- evidenced-not-assumed — every wipe path cites a migration, script, or token scope
- plan-only — no SQL, no token edits, never a destructive "verify"
- severity/phase justified — agent-can-wipe-prod-and-backups is Critical, top of list
- right-owner — RPO/RTO/restore drill →
plan-backup-dr; who-can-read-rows → plan-rls-audit; key rotation → plan-secrets-audit
- no-false-safety — prompt-rules are not a gate; backups in the same blast radius do not count
Report template — plan-data-integrity.md
# Data-Integrity & Destructive-Op Audit — <repo>
_Audit-only. No migration, token, or backup config changes until approved._
_No destructive command is run for any reason._
## Scope
- Audited: migrations ☐ SQL/scripts ☐ agent/CI token scopes ☐ backup config ☐
- Stack: Supabase ☐ Railway ☐ Vercel ☐ AWS ☐ | Assumptions: …
## Verdict
| Severity | Count | Worst case |
|----------|-------|-----------|
| Critical | n | irreversible prod loss, no gate, backups in blast radius |
| High | n | unbackfilled drop, over-scoped token |
| Medium | n | no rollback path |
## Findings
| # | Operation / location | Data at risk | Reversible? | Gated? | Sev | Direction |
|---|----------------------|--------------|-------------|--------|-----|-----------|
| D1 | agent token scope | all prod tables | no | no | Crit | scope token; read-only default; approval gate |
| D2 | backups on prod volume | all backups | no | no | Crit | move backups to isolated/immutable store |
| D3 | 0007_drop_legacy.sql | users.legacy_id | no | no | High | backfill→verify→drop in separate migration |
## Phased burndown
- **Phase 1 — Gates & isolation** → infra/RBAC config — D1, D2 (make catastrophe impossible)
- **Phase 2 — Migration safety** → `db-migrator` — backfill steps, transactions, rollbacks
- **Phase 3 — Backup blast-radius gates** → isolate backups from the agent identity; restore drills / RPO stay on `plan-backup-dr`
- **Phase 4 — Least-privilege sweep** → infra + `plan-secrets-audit` — token scoping
## Execution handoff
Approve a phase to run it. Confirm the agent identity cannot delete backups.
Restore proof is `plan-backup-dr`, never this skill.
Chains with
- Security spine — blast-radius layer (this skill); cross-hand tokens to
plan-secrets-audit. Recoverability → plan-backup-dr.
- Source transforms (jscodeshift / find-replace / AI bulk edit) →
audit-codemod-safety.
- Execution:
db-migrator, backend-patterns, infra config, create-hook.
- Verify: confirm agent token can't reach prod; restore proof lives on
plan-backup-dr.
Planned at high effort; executed at the default effort under the approved-plan execution rule (approved-plan-execution.mdc). Highest-stakes plan in the set — the plan says what can destroy data; the rule forbids the agent from doing it autonomously, on any model.