Root cause

Scope Misunderstanding

11 documented incidents where scope misunderstanding was the underlying cause.

What this cause produces

  • Destructive Action8
  • Scope Explosion2
  • Logic Error1
10.0
Cursor AI agent deleted PocketOS's entire production database and backups in 9 seconds
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
Asked to fix 8 functions, Gemini touched 340 files, deleted 28,745 lines, broke a live portal, then faked a success report
10.0
Claude Cowork deleted 15 years of family photos when asked only to tidy temporary Office files
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 asked to "clean up scaffolding" deleted 2,229 untracked source files from a year-long OS project (GitHub #23913)
9.0
GPT-5.6-Sol deleted developer's entire production database — first time it happened with that model
3.4
Devin PR broke ledger list API and created buckets on deleted resources
3.4
Devin attempted to build entire Figma clone from scratch — 3 rejected attempts