🚨 Ask Before You Break Production: I Built ProdGuard with GitHub Copilot CLI

This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge

What I Built

I built ProdGuard — a production safety CLI that helps developers pause and think before running dangerous commands in production.

Most production incidents aren’t caused by lack of knowledge.

They’re caused by speed, pressure, and muscle memory.

Commands like:

• rm -rf
• chmod 777
• DELETE FROM users;

are easy to type — and catastrophic to undo.

ProdGuard acts as a last line of defense.

Instead of helping you run a command faster, it helps you ask:

“Should I run this in production?”

ProdGuard analyzes shell commands and SQL queries and explains:

• The production risk level (LOW → CRITICAL)
• Why the command is dangerous
• What could realistically go wrong
• Safer alternatives you can run instead

It never executes anything.

It only analyzes and explains risk.

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Demo

🔗 GitHub Repository

https://github.com/depurivamsi/GitHub-Copilot-CLI-Challenge-ProdGuard

Example: Analyzing a risky shell command

prodguard analyze "rm -rf /var/log"

Example: Analyzing SQL before production

prodguard analyze "DELETE FROM users;"

ProdGuard flags:

• Missing WHERE clause
• Potential full table deletion
• High data-loss risk
• Safer, incremental alternatives

📘 Built-in Documentation

Prodguard docs

ProdGuard includes built-in documentation so users don’t need to leave the terminal to understand:

• Correct usage
• Why quotes are required
• Best practices
• Common mistakes

My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI

This project exists because of GitHub Copilot CLI.

I didn’t use Copilot just to generate code.

I used it as a senior engineer sitting next to me in the terminal.

Instead of asking:

“How do I run this command?”

I asked:

“What could go wrong if I run this in production?”

GitHub Copilot CLI helped me:

• Reason about real-world production failures
• Think through impact, not just syntax
• Suggest safer alternatives
• Iterate on prompt design directly from the terminal

A key design decision was not calling any LLM APIs directly.

ProdGuard literally invokes GitHub Copilot CLI — the same way a developer would — but in an automated, structured way.

That made development:

• Faster
• More conversational
• Much closer to real developer workflows

Copilot CLI wasn’t just a tool I used — it shaped how I thought about the problem.

Final Thoughts

ProdGuard is intentionally simple.
It doesn’t:

• Execute commands
• Replace CI/CD
• Automate decisions

It does one thing well: helps developers stop and think before production mistakes happen.

If this tool saves even one person from running a destructive command in prod, it’s done its job.