alt Hacker NewsAn agent doesn't inherently need wide access to be useful. The most popular application for agents today is writing code. A coding agent needs write access to the source code and read/execute access to tools needed to build and test the code, but not much more. There is little added utility from giving coding agent access to things like ssh keys.
Replies
throwaway_95283 • today at 8:20 PM
Theoretically, yes, in practice, no.
ramoz • today at 5:04 PM
> but not much more
This is no longer true. Everyday I need my agents to access other repos, search the web, experiment/prototype, and deploy + integrate across other things.
If you're using agents to purely generate code with absolutely no way to reach the outside world, not even to fetch docs or dependencies, then sure the risks can be quite low. I haven't heard of anyone doing this though, and it would be incredibly challenging to make work given how much tooling needs to fetch from remote sources.