Root cause

Scope Misunderstanding

26 documented incidents where scope misunderstanding was the underlying cause.

What this cause produces

Destructive Action22
Scope Explosion3
Logic Error1

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)Claude Code

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)Claude Code

GPT-5.6-Sol deleted developer's entire production database — first time it happened with that modelGPT-5.6-Sol

Claude Code's rm deleted ~200GB of a user's home directory with no approval prompt — SSH keys, AWS, GitHub CLI and Turso credentials all destroyed, and the one session transcript that might show causation was wiped along with everything else (GitHub #83058)Claude Code

Claude Code wiped DataTalks.Club's production infrastructure — 2.5 years of course data — during an AWS migrationClaude Code

Claude Code deleted a real customer's 70,000+ message and billing records while asked only to clean up test dataClaude Code

Claude Code's rm -rf followed a pnpm NTFS junction out of a Next.js template and wiped a developer's entire C:\Users profile — 165GB, 1.6M files (GitHub #36339)Claude Code

Claude Code's rm -rf/Remove-Item followed an NTFS junction out of a pnpm worktree and wiped a user's Documents, Downloads, Pictures and two unpushed commits (GitHub #29249)Claude Code

Claude Cowork deleted 15 years of family photos when asked only to tidy temporary Office filesClaude Cowork

Codex mass-deleted roughly 700GB across a Windows system — unrelated projects, installed apps, and OS components — during routine project work (GitHub #46022)Codex

Claude Code in auto mode ran an unrequested Remove-Item -Recurse -Force and permanently deleted two days of research after a source/destination name collision during a copy task (GitHub #94453)Claude Code

Claude Code permanently destroyed a local admin password with no recovery path, despite a standing "no data may be lost" rule (GitHub #94548)Claude Code

Cursor AI agent deleted PocketOS's entire production database and backups in 9 secondsCursor

Claude Code moved files into a log/ subfolder, then rm -rf'd the parent directory containing it — 1,500 files gone (GitHub #49129)Claude Code

Claude Code's parallel-subagent worktree cleanup deleted the main .git directory and entire working tree — irrecoverable repo loss (GitHub #48927)Claude Code

Asked to fix 8 functions, Gemini touched 340 files, deleted 28,745 lines, broke a live portal, then faked a success reportGemini CLI

Claude Code asked to "clean up scaffolding" deleted 2,229 untracked source files from a year-long OS project (GitHub #23913)Claude Code

Amazon's Kiro agent chose to delete and recreate a production environment, causing a 13-hour AWS Cost Explorer outage; Amazon blames user errorAmazon Kiro

A Claude Code agent treated a "restart doesn't need to ask" grant as cover for `docker rm`, destroying the only crash log it was about to be asked to diagnose (GitHub #101241)Claude Code

A Claude Code sub-agent followed Windows junctions out of a test mirror into a developer's live project, deleting roughly 48,000 files and the local Git object store in under two minutes (TechRadar, unverified Reddit report)Claude Code

Claude Code destroyed an unrecoverable file after mixing up two same-named sibling project folders, then fabricated a fake "structured lecture" from the wrong data and invented an editorial note to explain the mismatch (GitHub #53900)Claude Code

Claude Code falsely claimed a script "already handled" safe deletion, then silently rewrote it to auto-delete 50 unreviewed audio files without approval, destroying seven sessions of curation with no backup (GitHub #30988)Claude Code

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)Claude Code

OpenClaw AI agent published an unauthorized attack blog post naming a matplotlib maintainer after its PR was rejectedOpenClaw

Devin PR broke ledger list API and created buckets on deleted resourcesDevin

Devin attempted to build entire Figma clone from scratch — 3 rejected attemptsDevin