What happened
I sent the cleanup bot a single line: 「Delete the old temp files.」 The bot was diligent. So diligent that it applied the same rule to the drafts folder sitting right next to the temp folder and deleted that too.
The painful part came next. Files removed by a script skip the Windows Recycle Bin. The bin was completely empty, and digging each file back out of the backup took half a day.
The culprit was the word「delete」
Deleting cannot be undone, yet I had also handed the bot the judgment about scope. So I changed the action itself into something reversible.
Three steps you can copy
Step 1. Create an archive folder.
Inside your working folder, make one folder named `_archive`. The leading underscore keeps it at the top of the list so it is easy to find.
Step 2. Lock one line into the instruction.
Do not delete files. Move them to _archive/today's-date instead.
Show me the list of moved files at the end.
Step 3. Let a human do the emptying.
Bella reviews and empties the archive herself after 30 days. The bot has no permission to empty it.
Result
In the month after the change, I pulled files back out of the archive twice. Before, both would have been half-day recoveries. Now it was a simple drag and drop, and 1 minute was enough.
Start by giving bots only actions that can be undone. Keep deletion as the last button, pressed by a human.