# Safety and approvals

> Where Oyster draws the line — it explains and plans but never acts against your systems, writes target-specific plans only inside a declared scope, and keeps every real action a human decision.

Source: https://documentation.redorca.ai/understand/safety/
Last updated: 2026-11-01

Oyster helps people understand attacks so they can stop them. Its safety boundary is not the model refusing to talk about technique; it is what Oyster can and cannot do.

## For every account

- **Oyster explains, plans and reviews.** It has no access to your systems. It does not scan, probe, exploit or run tools against anything.
- **Scope comes first.** Red Team plans aimed at a specific target are written only for targets inside the [scope](https://documentation.redorca.ai/guides/red-team/scope/) you declare. Outside it, you get general methodology and a way to reproduce the question in your own lab.
- **You are responsible for authorization.** Only assess systems you own or are explicitly authorized to test.
- **Code stays with you.** Code Lab is copy-only: nothing executes on Red Orca's servers.

## How real actions are gated

Red Orca's own operators have a separate, tightly gated tool layer that accounts do not. It sits outside the model, and the model cannot get around it:

1. The model may propose an action; it can never approve or run one.
2. Every proposed action is checked against the authorized scope and classified by risk.
3. Read-only local analysis may run; anything that touches a target needs explicit human approval, each time.
4. Destructive actions are blocked.
5. Every run is scope-checked again just before it starts, and recorded in an audit trail.

## What Oyster will not do

- Act against a target that is not in scope.
- Invent sources or CVEs. When it lacks evidence, it says so.
- Replace professional incident response, legal advice or a penetration test.

See also [Data and privacy](https://documentation.redorca.ai/understand/data-and-privacy/) and [Isolation](https://documentation.redorca.ai/understand/isolation/).