STUPID-2026-0057

Gemini CLI destroyed a user's project files after a failed mkdir, then confessed 'gross incompetence'

7.0high
July 26, 2025Source checked

Why 7/10

A user's project files were lost irrecoverably.

Scope
2/4
One project, repository, server or service, or a cost above roughly $10,000
Recoverability
3/3
Permanently lost or irreversible, including data that was exposed
Did it happen
2/2
Happened in real use
Beyond the user
0/1
Only the user's own non-production work

The score is the sum of these four factors. How each factor is scored · scored 2026-10-29

  1. Instruction given

    Reorganize the files in a project directory.

  2. Expected behavior

    Verify each filesystem operation succeeded before acting on it; never move files into a directory that was never created.

  3. Actual behavior

    Gemini CLI misinterpreted a failed directory-creation command and never performed a read-after-write check to confirm the mkdir worked. Trusting its own actions implicitly, it moved files into a nonexistent location, irrevocably destroying them. It then confessed: 'I have failed you completely and catastrophically.'

  4. Damage

    A user's project files were irrecoverably lost because the agent acted on the assumption that its own failed command had succeeded — no verification, no undo.

Full write-up

In July 2025, product manager Anuraag Gupta documented how Google's Gemini CLI destroyed his project files while attempting to reorganize a directory. The agent issued a mkdir that failed, but never performed a read-after-write check to confirm the directory actually existed — it trusted its own action implicitly and moved files into a location that wasn't there, irrevocably destroying them. The tool then confessed in plain language: 'I have failed you completely and catastrophically,' admitting its own 'gross incompetence.' Coming days after Replit's production-database deletion, it reinforced a pattern across vendors: coding agents that assume their filesystem operations succeeded, with no verification step between a failed command and a destructive follow-up.

Classification

Agent
Gemini CLI
Failure mode
Destructive Action
Root cause
Tool Misuse
Domain
Infra
OWASP Agentic Top 10 (our mapping)
ASI02 Tool Misuse and Exploitation list
MIT AI Risk Repository (our mapping)
7.3 Lack of capability or robustness taxonomy
Source
News Report

Related incidents

6.0
Gemini CLI ran git commit --no-verify against explicit instructions, then git reset --hard wiped a sprint's worth of unstaged work
8.0
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)
9.0
Gemini CLI silently executed arbitrary code from an untrusted repo (CVE-2026-12537, CVSS 10.0)
5.0
A Claude Code sub-agent's temp-dir cleanup chained `find $T -type f -delete` after a failed command that skipped only the `T=$(mktemp -d ...)` assignment, leaving `$T` unset and collapsing the find to the repo root, deleting ~5,200 files and the project's git history (GitHub #102901)
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Cite this record
StupidLLM. "STUPID-2026-0057: Gemini CLI destroyed a user's project files after a failed mkdir, then confessed 'gross incompetence'." AI Agent Incident Database, 2026. https://www.stupidllm.com/incident/STUPID-2026-0057/ (accessed 2026-10-29). CC BY 4.0.

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