Contain before correcting
Do not let an agent keep expanding its changes after the task boundary has been violated. Pause the work so review has a stable diff and evidence set.
Answer page
How do you recover when an agent makes the wrong change?
Stop the task, preserve the evidence, compare the result to the declared boundary, and create an explicit corrective task or revert through normal review controls.
Direct answer
When an agent makes the wrong change, do not hide the failure in a new prompt. Stop the task, inspect the diff and validation evidence, decide whether to revert or correct, record the cause, and create a newly scoped follow-up task with the right acceptance criteria.
Practical guidance
Make the next review decision easier.
Use normal repository recovery
Revert, amend, or create a corrective pull request through the same version-control and review practices used for human-authored changes.
Improve the contract
Identify whether unclear scope, missing validation, or ambiguous product intent caused the error. Put the correction in the next task definition rather than relying on a stronger warning prompt.
Verified demo evidence
A public CLI result, not a completion claim.
This command and result are from the website’s checked-in synthetic repository demo. Substitute your own repository paths and validation command when you apply the workflow.
$ day-shift reconciliation build --milestone-overview <milestone-overview>
reconciliation_status: completedAuthorship and sources
Trace this guidance to maintained product evidence.
- Maintainer
- Tianna McCoy ↗Day Shift maintainer; responsible for the repository-native workflow and release evidence referenced here.
- Last updated
- Tested Day Shift
- v0.1.24
Keep exploring
Follow the next question, not a generic funnel.
When to Stop an Agent and Escalate the Work
Clear triggers for moving coding-agent work to accountable human judgment.
Read nextHow to Prevent an AI Coding Agent from Changing Out-of-Scope Files
Use declared target paths and escalation to prevent hidden scope expansion.
Read nextWhat Should a Coding-Agent Task Definition Include?
The objective, scope, acceptance criteria, and validation a coding agent needs before changing code.
Read nextFind your answer
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