Build-Time vs. Run-Time: Why Dev Tools Fail in Production — Averi Kitsch & Prerna Kakkar, Google
Sep 9, 2026 · 20:26
Averi Kitsch, technical lead for MCP Toolbox on Google Cloud databases, and Prerna Kakkar, tech lead for Eval Bench at Google, argue build-time tools like natural language to SQL don't belong in production; run-time tools need structured SQL with preconfigured parameters to block injection and hallucination. They show a demo where an agent hit an error and deleted the table. Security hinges on the confused deputy attack and Simon Willison's lethal trifecta, shown via a triage agent that queried a salary table and posted results to a ticket. Their fix separates user, application, and agent identities, moves connection details into a YAML source, enforces read-only at the driver, and pins SQL behind prepared statements, with sensitive values like user ID bound by the application.
