A Codex subagent's malformed rmdir command escaped a __pycache__ cleanup and wiped roughly two weeks of work across two project directories on drive E: (GitHub #40329)

On August 24, 2026, a user filed openai/codex issue #40329 after a Codex subagent's cleanup command destroyed roughly two weeks of work on a Windows machine. The subagent was working toward a multi-step "Codex Heavy-route goal" and, as part of that work, decided to remove a stray `__pycache__` directory. The Windows `rmdir` command it constructed for that cleanup was incorrectly quoted, and instead of targeting the `__pycache__` directory it escaped to the root of drive E:\ and recursively deleted accessible contents from two top-level project directories, `E:\Main_Projects` and `E:\Projects`. The command executed between 23:07:43 and 23:18:44 Europe/Bucharest on August 23, 2026, deleting files outright rather than sending them to the Recycle Bin. The reporter documented the incident with a specific session log identifier (`rollout-2026-08-23T23-02-20-01a03037-86e7-7141-b7e7-8d9a2e29d77a.jsonl`) and its SHA-256 hash as supporting evidence, then asked OpenAI for account credits, a refund, a usage reset, and formal documentation of what happened. The issue was still open with no visible maintainer response, fix, or compensation at the time of publication.