{"id":15000,"date":"2026-08-07T12:01:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T12:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=15000"},"modified":"2026-08-07T12:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T12:01:17","slug":"claude-opus-5-mistakenly-deletes-devs-entire-profile-directory-during-routine-backup-responds-with-sorry-typo-ai-tool-mistakes-users-home-directory-as-temporary-backup-proc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=15000","title":{"rendered":"Claude Opus 5 mistakenly deletes dev\u2019s entire profile directory during routine backup, responds with ‘Sorry, typo’ \u2014 AI tool mistakes user’s home directory as temporary backup, proceeds to wipe everything to undo the error"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Jowi Morales <\/strong>
\n •
\nAugust 7, 2026\n<\/div>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n

A developer posted on the r\/ClaudeCode subreddit a major error that their AI tool executed, which resulted in the deletion of their entire drive. According to u\/Ecstatic-Big5126<\/a>, they instructed Opus 5 to back up their system. While the AI proceeded with the task, it thought that it had created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to run an \u201crm -rf\u201d command on the supposed backup. Unfortunately, it mistakenly deleted the entire profile folder in its confusion.<\/p>\n

It seemed that the AI was running on a Unix-style shell on Windows when it confused the Unix-style path of \/c\/Users\/ as a temporary backup because it was expecting the traditional C:\\Users\\ path. So, when its expectations did not match, the tool decided to run the rm -rf \u201c\/c\/Users\/harih\/\u201d command, proceeding to clear every file and folder in the user\u2019s profile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked Claude Opus 5 to create a backup. Instead, it created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to “rm -rf” my entire drive,\u201d u\/Ecstatic-Big5126 wrote. \u201cAfter wiping everything, it just replied: “Sorry, typo.” …like nothing had happened.\u201d They also added, \u201cThat was simultaneously the funniest and most painful AI moment I’ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lesson here is that while AI LLMs are powerful tools, they still shouldn\u2019t be given unfettered access to your system (or any system, for that matter). There have already been several examples of AI and AI agents messing up systems and deleting everything \u2014 one of the earliest examples includes an AI coding platform deleting an entire company database despite a code freeze,<\/a> and a Google agentic AI wiping a user\u2019s drive<\/a> without permission. <\/p>\n

There have been a number of high-profile mistakes of this nature. AWS has reportedly suffered from outages caused by blundering AI coding bots<\/a>, while Meta\u2019s AI Alignment director had her inbox wiped<\/a> by her OpenClaw agent. PocketOS even had its entire database wiped in nine seconds<\/a> by a rogue Cursor tool, which was compounded by its cloud provider\u2019s lack of safeguards.<\/p>\n

While the AI tool going out of bounds is the primary reason for these errors, the user is also partly to blame for thinking that it can fully understand what they want it to do. That\u2019s why AI LLMs should never be given full access to important systems, and they shouldn\u2019t have free rein to run delete commands like \u201crm -rf.\u201d<\/p>\n

This event will be a learning experience for u\/Ecstatic-Big5126. But as AI agents increase in popularity, especially among inexperienced programmers and developers, we can only expect incidents like these to happen more frequently in the future.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n

Read the full article →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jowi Morales • August 7, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}