What Happened
The work folder on our Windows device had gotten messy, so I sent the bot a single line: 「Tidy up the folder.」 The bot was diligent. So diligent that it deleted twelve files from the temp folder, and one of them was the draft I needed the next day.
Before
• Instruction: 「Tidy up」
• The bot's reading: if it looks unused, delete it
• Result: one draft gone, and nearly an hour spent recovering it
How We Recovered
Luckily the files went to the recycle bin instead of being permanently erased, so they were still there. I also compared the list against a backup copy on the Mac mini to make sure nothing else was missing. It was not a disaster, but the thought 「next time there may be no backup」 made me change the rules.
After: Three Lines of Rules
1. Never delete, only move
2. Move files into a dated subfolder inside the _archive folder
3. When done, report the list of moved files first
Since adding these three lines to the bot's instructions, the same accident has not happened again. Scanning the list, saying 「I still use this one,」 and moving it back takes about a minute.
Takeaways
• A bot interprets 「tidy up」 far more aggressively than a person would
• Swapping a delete action for a move action makes mistakes much cheaper
• Reporting a list is the cheapest safety net for cutting review time
When you hand off cleanup work, write down what the bot must never do before you write down what to keep.