Five-Step Checklist to Safely Grant AI Coding Agents Write Access to Your Repo

Giving an AI coding agent write access to a repository carries real risks, particularly when it can edit files, run commands, or prepare mergeable changes. A proposed five-minute preflight check covers five key areas: reproducible environment setup, a fast local feedback loop, clearly tiered permissions separating safe reads from destructive actions, defined boundaries for sensitive data and instruction authority, and structured handoff templates that document evidence of what was done. Each area is scored from 0 to 2, where a low score signals the need for read-only or closely supervised agent use rather than an outright ban. The framework also distinguishes between credentials leaking through logs or fixtures and prompt-injection risks from untrusted text sources like issue trackers or generated files. A free browser-based audit tool and a paid repository kit with ready-made policy files are available to help teams implement the checklist.