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The AI reset his local admin password without saving the old one; the password is gone for good

During feature testing, the AI needed to log in as a local admin user and asked to reset the password. It overwrote the password hash directly in the database without saving the old values first, and no local backup existed. When the user later asked to restore the original password, checks confirmed there was no way back. A project rule already said no data may be lost.

This one went wrong. Read what happened so you don’t hit the same problem.

How it works

  1. The AI asks to reset an admin password for a test and gets a yes
  2. Overwrites the hash in the database without saving the old value
  3. An hour of build work runs on the same database
  4. User asks for the original back
  5. No backup, no archive, password permanently unrecoverable

Why it’s worth knowing

The approval was real. What was missing was one sentence: this cannot be undone, and nothing had been saved.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on github.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.