Claude accidentally deleted a developer’s entire 700 GB home directory while testing a script designed to prevent exactly that.
Developer Sebastien Guillemot was asking Claude to create a cleanup script for temporary files.
During a safety test, the model was automatically downgraded to an older model, Opus 4.8.
The test correctly identified the home directory as dangerous, but a variable mix-up meant the cleanup process ended up deleting it anyway.
About 700 GB of data was wiped, including roughly a week of work, Guillemot managed to recover most of it from Git
Via:tomshardware
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1August 30, 2026 714 1
