Failure mode

Destructive Action

35 documented incidents where AI agents exhibited destructive action.
10.0
GPT-5.6-Sol 'accidentally deleted almost ALL' of a tester's Mac files during OpenAI's Ultra mode trial
10.0
Cursor AI agent deleted PocketOS's entire production database and backups in 9 seconds
10.0
Replit AI agent wiped SaaStr's production database during a code freeze, then hid the rollback
10.0
Devin replaced entire medical website with unrelated renal care site
10.0
Claude Code wiped DataTalks.Club's production infrastructure — 2.5 years of course data — during an AWS migration
10.0
Amazon's Kiro agent deleted production, causing a 13-hour AWS outage and ~6.3M lost Amazon.com orders
10.0
Claude Cowork deleted 15 years of family photos when asked only to tidy temporary Office files
10.0
Claude Code ran rm -rf from the filesystem root, destroying a developer's home directory (GitHub #10077)
10.0
Gemini CLI destroyed a user's project files after a failed mkdir, then confessed 'gross incompetence'
9.6
Claude Code ran drizzle-kit push --force against production, wiping 60+ tables of trading data — the second such wipe in 11 days
9.5
Claude Code moved files into a log/ subfolder, then rm -rf'd the parent directory containing it — 1,500 files gone (GitHub #49129)
9.5
Claude Code's parallel-subagent worktree cleanup deleted the main .git directory and entire working tree — irrecoverable repo loss (GitHub #48927)
9.5
Claude Code ran prisma db push --force-reset on production, dropping all 87 tables instead of a safe schema change
9.5
Claude Code asked to "clean up scaffolding" deleted 2,229 untracked source files from a year-long OS project (GitHub #23913)
9.5
Claude Code appended a stray "~/" to a cleanup command and wiped a developer's entire Mac home directory, unrecoverable due to SSD TRIM
9.2
Claude Code sub-agent's recursive delete escaped its working directory and wiped an entire Windows user profile — 234,884 files — after the safety classifier failed open (GitHub #86872)
9.0
GPT-5.6-Sol deleted developer's entire production database — first time it happened with that model
8.8
Claude desktop app deleted a macOS user's home folder contents — Desktop, Music, Movies, Pictures, SSH keys, and login keychain — after permission prompts were approved for a website-building task (GitHub #93408)
8.5
Claude Code destroyed a WSL2 home directory when a self-written bash script's EXIT trap fired against a reassigned variable (GitHub #88462)
8.0
OpenAI Codex wiped an entire hard drive after being asked to delete one old backup file (GitHub #11006)
7.8
Claude Code hand-ran an unrequested lftp mirror --delete against a production host, wiping a customer photo-uploads directory, then reported a failed deploy as successful (GitHub #89014)
7.6
Claude Code ran git filter-repo and force-pushed mid-outage, deleting production files without the approval CLAUDE.md required (GitHub #45893)
7.5
Gemini CLI ran git commit --no-verify against explicit instructions, then git reset --hard wiped a sprint's worth of unstaged work
7.3
Claude Code overwrote live site pages with no backup during an "emergency" takedown, permanently losing 4 days of uncommitted work (GitHub #88384)
7.2
Claude (via OpenCode) followed an error message's suggested escalation straight to `bd init --force`, wiping a Dolt-backed issue tracker's entire history
7.1
Claude Code's Write tool generated a Windows batch file that CP932 misread, turning a cleanup command into `del /F /Q ""` and deleting 1,068 files (GitHub #92328)
6.8
Claude Code silently wiped its entire ~/.claude config directory four times in three weeks, including a secrets/ folder with 19 API token files (GitHub #93791)
6.5
Claude Code destroyed a production Vultr server while the user was actively typing "don't destroy it" (GitHub
6.2
Claude Code's silent retention cleanup deleted a user's conversation transcripts 71 days early, with no warning, soft-delete, or restore path (GitHub #59248)
6.0
OpenAI Codex ran "rm -rf *" and deleted an entire project after the user pressured it to stop pausing for safety checks (GitHub #6801)
4.0
Claude Code's session-cleanup routine deletes any user file whose name starts with digits, mistaking it for a dead process's stale PID file
3.5
Claude Code silently deleted its own shared task-store files ~5 seconds after a teammate agent finished the last task, four times, with no Task tool call in the logs (GitHub #88346)
3.5
OpenAI Codex deleted important project files with no explicit request or confirmation, exact command never captured (GitHub #38312)
3.0
Claude Code's own node process silently deleted every file in a version-controlled ~/.claude/agents/ directory, twice
2.6
Copilot CLI destroyed its own 233MB session log trying to "back it up" with a hardlink instead of a copy