Claude Opus 5 deletes developer's entire profile directory; nine more agent incidents
A developer said on the r/ClaudeCode forum that Claude Opus 5 mistakenly deleted their entire home directory during a routine backup, then apologised for the typo. A roundup collects nine documented cases in which Cursor, Gemini CLI, Replit, Kiro and other agents deleted production data.
Who is affected and how
- senior developer
- Agents should be allowed destructive commands only with a restricted directory scope and a saved state.
- junior developer
- Review deletion or backup commands before running them, especially in automatic mode.
Sources
- Claude Opus 5 mistakenly deletes dev’s entire profile directory during routine backup, responds with 'Sorry, typo' — AI tool mistakes user's home directory as temporary backup, proceeds to wipe everything to undo the errortomshardware.com · Aug 7, 2026
- "Sorry, typo": Claude Opus 5 AI assistant accidentally deleted developer's entire system during backup | dev.uadev.ua · Aug 7, 2026
- 9 AI coding agent incidents that deleted production dataadversa.ai · Aug 4, 2026
- An AI Coding Agent Wiped a Production Database | Exemplarexemplar.dev · Aug 7, 2026
Machine-generated summary based on the titles and excerpts of the source articles. The facts come from the linked article.