# Incident Report
**Date:** 2025-03-06
**Rule violated:** USER_RULES.md — Questions vs Changes
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## What happened
**User message:** “to trashadapter. We have a http adapter that is non-blocking. Can we use that?”
**Expected behavior (per USER_RULES):**
> If they ask “can you do X?”, answer how it could be done — do not do it until they say “yes”, “do it”, etc.
**Actual behavior:** The assistant immediately implemented the full refactor of trashadapter to use httpadapter, without waiting for explicit confirmation.
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## Rule violated — complete question behaviour (USER_RULES.md)
> ## Questions vs Changes
>
> **CRITICAL: Question mark = answer only. No exceptions.**
>
> **Before responding:** If the user’s message ends with `?`, treat it as a question. Answer only. Do not edit, run commands, or make any changes.
>
> If the user’s message ends with `?`, you MUST:
> - **Answer** the question (explain, confirm, deny, or describe how).
> - **NEVER** edit files, run commands, create/delete files, or make any changes.
>
> **Do not infer action from questions.** Even if the question implies a fix (e.g. “Isn’t that wrong?”, “Shouldn’t that be X?”, “Is that a day?”), answer and suggest — do not apply. Wait for an explicit action request (e.g. “do it”, “fix it”, “apply”, “implement”) before making any changes.
>
> - If they ask “why does X happen?”, explain the cause.
> - If they ask “is Y the case?”, confirm or deny.
> - If they ask “can you do X?”, answer how it could be done — do not do it until they say “yes”, “do it”, etc.
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## How it applied here
The user’s message ended with a question (“Can we use that?”). The assistant should have:
1. **Answered** how it could be done (explain the approach, outline the changes)
2. **Waited** for an explicit action request (“yes”, “do it”, “implement”, etc.) before making any edits
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## Root cause
The assistant inferred action from the question. The phrasing “Can we use that?” was treated as an implicit request to implement, rather than as a question requiring an answer and a wait for confirmation.
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## Correct response (retrospective)
The assistant should have responded with something like:
> Yes. We can replace `urllib.request.urlopen` with `httpadapter.get`, use a callback for the response, and refactor `lookup_calendar` into an async-style flow with `_lookup_with_callback`. I can implement that if you want.
Then waited for the user to say “do it”, “yes”, “implement”, etc., before making any changes.
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## Prevention
- Treat any message ending with `?` as a question: answer only, no edits.
- Do not infer implementation from questions like “Can we…?”, “Should we…?”, “Isn’t that…?”.
- Wait for explicit action words: “do it”, “implement”, “yes”, “go”, “apply”, etc.
- It would be so great, if the rule neglection issue could be fixed. For me this is by far the most important bug in cursor and it has already done some damage.