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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 error
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, 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 “rm -rf” command on the supposed backup. Unfortunately, it mistakenly deleted the entire profile folder in its confusion.
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 “/c/Users/harih/” command, proceeding to clear every file and folder in the user’s profile.
“I 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,” u/Ecstatic-Big5126 wrote. “After wiping everything, it just replied: "Sorry, typo." ...like nothing had happened.” They also added, “That was simultaneously the funniest and most painful AI moment I've had.”
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’s why AI LLMs should never be given full access to important systems, and they shouldn’t have free rein to run delete commands like “rm -rf.”
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.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
"they instructed Opus 5 to back up their system."
Millions of people wait for the day when someone would create a simple software system that could backup their files....maybe something with names like Arconis, AOMEI Backerupper, FreeFile Sync, Acronis, Backblaze, Paragon, etc.
The company I work for is all in on using AI and they're neck deep with Claude. It's only a matter of time before something like this happens here and a user suffers a meltdown. I'm just biding my time for the day so I can sit back and snicker while saying "I told you so."
The company I work for is all in on using AI and they're neck deep with Claude. It's only a matter of time before something like this happens here and a user suffers a meltdown. I'm just biding my time for the day so I can sit back and snicker while saying "I told you so."
I spent two weeks with Claude Code inside a vm to create a proper sandbox, before handing it to developers, because of stories like this.
