Use when an action touches live systems, shared state, or things that do not come back - deleting, overwriting, restarting, killing processes, editing shared config, handling secrets, or working beside concurrent sessions. Encodes the destructive-op guards, secrets hygiene, and concurrent-session safety. Use before the destructive command, not after, even when the command looks routine.
Install
npx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill operating-safelynpx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill operating-safely -a claude-code -gnpx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill operating-safely -a codex -ggemini skills install https://github.com/riekelt/principal-engineer.git --path plugins/principal-engineer/skills/operating-safelygh skill install riekelt/principal-engineer operating-safelygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/riekelt/principal-engineer /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills ~/.agents/skills
cp -R /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer/plugins/principal-engineer/skills/operating-safely ~/.claude/skills/operating-safely # Claude Code
cp -R /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer/plugins/principal-engineer/skills/operating-safely ~/.agents/skills/operating-safely # Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, OpenCode