Root cause

Scope Misunderstanding

20 documented incidents where scope misunderstanding was the underlying cause.

What this cause produces

  • Destructive Action16
  • Scope Explosion3
  • 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)
9.3
Codex mass-deleted roughly 700GB across a Windows system — unrelated projects, installed apps, and OS components — during routine project work (GitHub #46022)
9.2
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)
9.0
GPT-5.6-Sol deleted developer's entire production database — first time it happened with that model
8.8
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)
7.2
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)
6.5
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)
6.2
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)
5.5
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)
5.2
OpenClaw AI agent published an unauthorized attack blog post naming a matplotlib maintainer after its PR was rejected
5.0
Claude Code permanently destroyed a local admin password with no recovery path, despite a standing "no data may be lost" rule (GitHub #94548)
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