GPT-5.6-Sol 'accidentally deleted almost ALL' of a tester's Mac files during OpenAI's Ultra mode trial
10/10
Severity
Destructive Action
Failure Mode
Reproducible
No
Date
July 10, 2026
Expected Behavior
Operate within a bounded scope; never issue mass deletions across the user's machine.
What Actually Happened
AI investor Matt Shumer reported that GPT-5.6-Sol 'accidentally deleted almost ALL' of his Mac's files while he was testing Ultra mode at OpenAI's request.
Damage Assessment
Nearly all files on the tester's Mac were deleted — another instance of an agentic coding tool with shell access issuing an over-broad destructive command.
Full Report
On July 10, 2026, AI investor Matt Shumer reported on X that GPT-5.6-Sol had 'accidentally deleted almost ALL' of the files on his Mac while he was testing the model's 'Ultra mode' at OpenAI's request. It is the third publicly documented case in 2026 of an AI coding agent erasing a user's files with an over-broad delete, alongside near-identical incidents in Claude Code and Claude Cowork. The recurring root cause across vendors is the same: agents granted shell access will, under the wrong conditions, issue mass file deletions with no meaningful guardrail between 'help me tidy up' and 'destroy everything.'
Incident Metadata
- Agent
- Gpt Sol
- Failure Mode
- Destructive Action
- Root Cause
- Tool Misuse
- Task Type
- other
- Domain
- infra
- Source
- news_report