red-button

name	red-button
description	Use when an action could cause material, hard-to-reverse harm to production, data, security, finances, users, or external systems.

Red Button

Some changes deserve a slower agent. Apply a focused gate only where consequence requires it.

Classify the operation

1. Name the exact action, target environment, affected users or assets, and externally visible effect.
2. Classify the operation as ordinary or high-risk. Mark it high-risk when a credible failure could materially destroy or expose important state, cross a security or authorization boundary, move money, contact many people, break external consumers, disrupt production, or resist timely recovery.
3. Keep reversible local edits, read-only inspection, isolated test work, and draft pull requests ordinary unless they themselves create consequential side effects.
4. When risk is uncertain, use read-only checks to resolve the target, blast radius, rollback, and authority. Uncertainty alone does not make ordinary work high-risk.
5. For an ordinary operation, proceed with the normal workflow. Do not load a reference or manufacture a risk review.
6. For a high-risk operation, name the risk category and load only the matching reference.

Load the focused reference

Risk category	Reference
Production schema or data migration; deletion or bulk repair	data-operations.md
Force push, rebase of published work, or history rewrite	repository-history.md
Authentication, authorization, IAM, secrets, or credentials	identity-and-secrets.md
Charges, refunds, subscriptions, invoices, pricing, or payment flows