Ask HN: Your shell console "sanity prompts"?

Does anyone have any "life saving" bash profile aliases, bashrc configurations or settings or restrictions otherwise, which you regularly institute to "hazard control" yours and others' human error? Anything would help; your settings for Vi/Vim, Bashrc, /profile, inputrc, and anything related to remote the likeless -- all the way up to explicit file and user mode reviews using Perl/Python/Bash scripts, or the BSD "cp/copy files" command, and human actions like GDrive/Dbox/TimeMachine backups.

For context: I'm just now past the worst of my recovery from some overly zealous housekeeping deletions from an non-backup-ed part of the filesystem on a remote DOcean droplet, over SSH. And, thank you for your effort in replying to me.