Glossary
Destructive action
An action that deletes, overwrites or irreversibly changes data, such as dropping a table, force-pushing or wiping a directory.
Checks run on our GPUs in Switzerland. Request payloads are not stored.Security
What Destructive action means
A destructive action removes or irreversibly changes data: DROP TABLE, rm -rf, git push --force, deleting a cloud resource, overwriting a file without a backup. Many are routine in the right context; the risk is that an agent runs one in the wrong context, against the wrong target, or because an injected instruction asked it to.
Destructiveness and blast radius are related but not the same. Deleting a temporary file is destructive with a small blast radius; sending an email is not destructive but has an external side effect.
MCP Guard’s destructive head scores whether an action deletes, overwrites or irreversibly changes data. Deterministic safeguards remain essential: backups, soft deletes, point-in-time recovery, and credentials that cannot drop production tables. A guard helps catch destructive calls that slip through; it should not be the only thing between an agent and your data.
Related terms
How Destructive action connects to the rest of the vocabulary.