Lesson 2 of 10 · AI Security and Guardrails That Hold Up
In this lesson. User content is data, not instructions — delimit it.
What you will learn
- Delimit user text
- Rules outside
- Tools checked
Walkthrough
You will wrap user content, put system rules outside it, and never execute tools from raw user text without checks. This is the core engineering move.
Work through the ideas in order. After each point, pause and connect it to a task you already do — a document, a workflow, or a feature you own. The goal of AI Security and Guardrails That Hold Up is usable skill, not a pile of notes.
If something is unclear, rewrite it in your own words before you continue. Teaching the step back to yourself is the fastest way to see gaps.
Practice
Rewrite one prompt with a clear untrusted-data block.
Keep the first attempt small. A finished example you can reuse beats a perfect plan you never run.
Check your understanding
- Can you explain the goal of this lesson in one sentence to a teammate?
- Where would you apply “Delimit user text” in your own work this week?
- What would you change on a second pass of the practice?
Next. Continue to the following lesson when the practice has a real artifact, even a rough one.