What a rug pull is
A rug pull is when a team drains a project's value and disappears. It can be a hard rug, where code lets them take the funds outright, or a soft rug, where they dump their allocation and abandon the project while everyone else holds the bag. Both end the same way for you.
The structural tells
Watch for ownership that was never renounced on contracts that let the owner mint or move funds. Watch for liquidity that is not locked, so it can be pulled in one transaction. Watch for an anonymous team with custody and no audit. None of these alone proves intent, but stacked together they describe the machine a rug runs on.
The behavioral tells
Urgency is the oldest one. Limited time, get in now, you are early. Guaranteed returns is another, because nobody can guarantee returns. A community where every hard question gets deleted or the asker gets banned is telling you what the project is. Real teams answer the awkward questions.