Why it matters

Safety is what makes delegation possible. The whole promise of an agent is that you can hand it a task and walk away, and you can only do that if you trust the controls. The "Everything About Codex" guide frames the principle bluntly: treat a coding agent as a privileged identity. Scope its access, isolate secrets, and never let its output reach production without review. The 2026 security incidents (Chapter 16) are what happens when these controls are missing. Sandboxing, approvals, and checkpoints are not bureaucracy; they are the seatbelt that lets the agent go fast inside the workspace while asking before it does something that matters outside it.