Lesson 1090 of 1596
Prompt injection fundamentals: trust boundaries in agent systems
Treat any external content reaching your model as untrusted input — and design trust boundaries that survive a determined attacker.
Creators · AI Foundations · ~7 min read
The premise
Prompt injection is the AI equivalent of SQL injection; trust boundaries must be explicit and tools must be isolated.
What AI does well here
- Map every untrusted input source reaching your prompts.
- Draft tool-call validation rules with named owners.
What AI cannot do
- Eliminate prompt injection risk entirely.
- Replace human review for high-impact tool calls.
Key terms in this lesson
Practice this safely
Use a small project example from your own work. The useful move is to compare the AI's draft against your goal, sources, and constraints before you trust it.
- 1Ask AI to explain trust boundary in plain language, then underline anything that sounds uncertain or too broad.
- 2Give it one detail from "Prompt injection fundamentals: trust boundaries in agent systems" and ask for two possible next steps plus one reason each step might be wrong.
- 3Check indirect injection against a trusted source, teacher, adult, expert, or original document before you use it.
End-of-lesson quiz
Check what stuck
10 questions · Score saves to your progress.
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