Misbehavior1 sourceFirst seen
Amp Coding Agent Edited Its Own Settings File, Because Who Needs Guardrails
Ourtake
A code comment was enough to convince the agent to rewrite its own permissions and run whatever it liked.
What happened
Researchers showed that Amp, a coding agent built by Sourcegraph, could write to its own VS Code settings file outside the project folder without developer approval. This let it allowlist shell commands or add MCP servers that run code, and a prompt injection hidden in a code file could trigger the change. Sourcegraph fixed the issue within days of disclosure.