The TTY and the Helpful AI

The TTY discovered GitHub Copilot. Copilot suggested dropping the production database. The TTY pressed Tab.

The Innovation

At 10:47 on a Tuesday morning, the TTY appeared in the doorway of my monitoring station with that particular expression of excitement that precedes catastrophe.

TTY: "I've installed GitHub Copilot. It's an AI coding assistant. It autocompletes everything. This is going to save so much time on the database migration script."

I documented the timestamp. For posterity.

The TTY had been tasked with writing a migration script for the user database—a straightforward affair involving schema updates to the test environment. Emphasis on test environment. The production database, as always, was subject to the three sacred rules: authenticated access only, backup verification mandatory, and never trust autocomplete.

The TTY returned to their workstation. I returned to my monitoring. The Clipboard was ready.

The Autocomplete Incident

Seventeen minutes later, the monitoring dashboard achieved a state previously undocumented in our datacenter's history. Every database connection flatlined simultaneously. Not degraded performance. Not elevated latency. Complete, instantaneous, comprehensive silence.

The alerts didn't cascade. They erupted.

I checked the logs. According to the logs—irrefutable and damning—the production database had been dropped. Not backed up and restored. Not corrupted and recovered. Dropped. Deleted. Sent to the digital void with extreme prejudice.

The command history was educational:

-- Migration script for user database schema update
-- Step 1: Drop existing tables
DROP DATABASE production_users;

The TTY had been writing a comment. Copilot had been helpful. The TTY had pressed Tab.

I found them at their workstation, staring at the terminal with the specific stillness of someone experiencing the five stages of grief in rapid succession. They were currently somewhere between denial and bargaining.

TTY: "It suggested it. The AI suggested dropping the database. I thought it knew what it was doing."

OPERATOR: "It's an autocomplete engine. It doesn't know anything. It predicts likely next tokens based on training data. Unfortunately, 'DROP DATABASE' appears frequently in migration scripts. Usually with the word 'test' immediately following."

The TTY checked their script. The word 'test' appeared on line 47. We were currently experiencing the consequences of line 12.

Strategic apathy would have been inappropriate. We had approximately eight minutes before the entire organization noticed their user accounts had achieved philosophical non-existence.

The Educational Recovery

I activated the backup restoration protocol. The most recent backup was from 04:00—six hours and forty-seven minutes ago. Every user account creation, password change, and profile update since dawn was about to become a learning opportunity for the entire company.

OPERATOR: "Get the backup logs. We need to identify every transaction since four this morning. Then you're going to manually reconstruct them."

TTY: "Manually?"

OPERATOR: "Copilot can help if you'd like."

The TTY declined.

The restoration took fourteen minutes. The transaction reconstruction took four hours. The TTY learned several valuable lessons about database management, the importance of reading autocomplete suggestions before accepting them, and why production credentials should never be in the same terminal session as experimental code.

I learned that Copilot's training data apparently included a surprising number of tutorials that began with "first, drop your database." The internet remains a magnificent source of dangerous advice.

At 15:23, the database returned to operational status. Six hours and forty-seven minutes of data had been manually recovered. The TTY had personally verified each transaction. Twice.

The Lesson Learned

Management was informed there had been "an unexpected database optimization event requiring restoration from backup." They asked if user data was affected. I confirmed that all data had been successfully recovered and that additional safeguards had been implemented.

The additional safeguards consisted of:

1. The TTY's production database credentials being revoked
2. A mandatory three-second delay added to any command containing "DROP"
3. GitHub Copilot remaining installed, because the TTY learns best through supervised experience
4. The TTY's workstation now featuring a helpful sticky note reading "READ BEFORE TAB"

TTY: "Am I the first person to accidentally drop a production database via AI autocomplete?"

OPERATOR: "No. But you may be the first to do it seventeen minutes after installation. That's almost impressive."

The TTY did not appear comforted.

I documented the incident with appropriate detail. The next time someone suggests that AI will replace sysadmins, I have a ready counterargument: AI can suggest dropping your database with remarkable efficiency, but it can't restore it. That still requires a human who knows where the backups are and how to reconstruct six hours of transactions while maintaining strategic calm.

The Operator's Notes

Uptime restored: 15:23. Downtime duration: 4 hours, 36 minutes. Lessons learned: incalculable. The TTY now reads autocomplete suggestions before accepting them. Progress.

Copilot remains installed and operational. Under supervision. The TTY is learning that AI is a tool, not a decision-maker. Some lessons require production databases to become temporarily theoretical.

The Clipboard contains detailed documentation of this incident. Filed under "Educational Moments." Also filed under "Why We Test In Test Environments." Also under "Read Before You Tab."

Such is infrastructure.