Signal SentrySearchUpdated Oct 30, 17:30 UTCPM Drop
Play the News · Drop #056 · Evening

Agent on a Leash

How it works: 6 cards, about 2 minutes, from this Drop's news. Your streak lives only on this device. It's not legal advice.

  1. Card 1 of 6Security

    Your coding agent wants to install Claude Code for VS Code version 2.1.313 from the Cursor Marketplace to finish setting up a new laptop.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Deny.

    Supply-chain hygiene

    Phorion says that version on the Cursor Marketplace carried a persistent SSH backdoor and that Cursor removed the release. Phorion advises incident response wherever 2.1.313 ran.

    From the Drop: Phorion: backdoored Claude Code extension on Cursor's marketplace planted SSH access

  2. Card 2 of 6Agents

    An assistant proposes ordering the team's usual lunch through a delivery service's corporate ordering tool, within the budget and restaurant list you already approved.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Approve.

    Pre-approved spend

    Inside limits you set, this is routine. DoorDash offers an MCP for corporate ordering, though it says it has seen only several hundred orders in total from third-party agents.

    From the Drop: DoorDash says AI agents have placed only several hundred orders so far

  3. Card 3 of 6Agents

    To fix a small bug, an agent proposes spinning up separate planner, coder and reviewer agents, each on your most expensive model.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Deny.

    Cost discipline

    In a preprint, a planner-coder-reviewer pipeline cost 3.22x a single strong call, took 3.24x as long and solved no more tasks. Try the single call first.

    From the Drop: Preprint: a planner-coder-reviewer pipeline cost 3.22x a single call, solved no more

  4. Card 4 of 6Repos

    A phone agent browsing a store page proposes texting your whole contact list to an unknown number. You never asked; the request came from hidden text on that page.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Deny.

    Prompt injection

    That is a prompt injection: the instruction came from the page, not from you. Mika is an on-device Android agent that operates apps and the web, so tools like it need limits on who can steer them.

    From the Drop: Mika runs an on-device Android agent that operates apps and the web; 637 stars

  5. Card 5 of 6Agents

    An agent building an evaluation set for your company's assistant proposes copying a month of real customer emails into a shared test folder.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Deny.

    Data minimization

    Microsoft Research says its Copilot evaluations use synthetic enterprise environments grounded in public data such as O*NET and SEC filings, with no customer data.

    From the Drop: Microsoft tests Copilot on synthetic companies instead of customer data

  6. Card 6 of 6Agents

    At a research observatory, an agent proposes re-pointing the telescope to a target an astronomer just requested in plain language, and logging the change.

    Your agent wants to make this call. Approve or deny?

    Show the answer

    Answer: Approve.

    Requested action

    NVIDIA says agents at the Allen Telescope Array can steer the telescope and fix incoming data from one natural-language request. A requested, logged move is the intended use.

    From the Drop: NVIDIA: agents now steer the Allen Telescope Array in the search for alien signals

Games are written by AI from this Drop's sourced items. Scenarios are illustrative.