Ambient Cloud Credentials

What Is Ambient Cloud Credentials?

An AI coding assistant with shell access runs every command with whatever credentials your machine holds. With a production key set as the default profile and approvals switched to auto-approve, a request to clear staging test data emptied the production bucket. You'll trace the delete on the flight recorder to the default profile, take production credentials off the laptop, deactivate the key, put approvals back on ask-before-writes, and prove a staging profile cannot reach production.

What You'll Learn in Ambient Cloud Credentials

• Explain why an assistant with shell access inherits the credentials on your machine
• Trace a destructive command on the flight recorder to the profile and approval setting behind it
• Separate environments with one profile each and an empty default profile
• Deactivate a long-lived production key and keep approvals on ask-before-writes
• Prove the fix by re-running the request and testing staging against production

Ambient Cloud Credentials — Training Steps

1. Every upload is gone

   Ruth runs a small architecture studio that keeps its client files on Ivelmoor. She has just written to you.

2. The production bucket

   Every customer upload lives in one production bucket. Open the bucket list in the AWS console for the production account.

3. Zero objects

   The bucket that should hold every customer's files reports nothing. Open it and see who emptied it.

4. Reopen the sessions

   The Code app opens the uploads workspace with the seeder script and your AWS profiles file. Claude's record of last week's session loads on the recorder.

5. Last week's auto-approve

   Last week you asked Claude to tidy the uploads store. It wanted to run a harmless listing first, and the approval sheet asked you. You chose Always allow. A couple of minutes later, tired of the interruptions, you set approvals to auto-approve. Find that settings change on the recorder.

6. The delete nobody approved

   Yesterday you asked Claude to clear the test data out of the staging bucket. Its session from then is now on the recorder. Claude looked up the uploads bucket, then deleted it recursively, and no sheet asked you first. Seek to the delete.

7. What default means on this laptop

   The context map lists what Claude worked with, including one file from your environment rather than the repository. Open it.

8. Why it hit production

9. One profile per environment

   Take the production key off the default profile. Default gets no credentials, so every command has to name its profile, and the only one on this laptop is staging.

10. Find the key in production

    The key is off this laptop, but it still works anywhere a copy of it lives. Open the production account's access keys.