Claude deletes a developer's 700 GB home folder in a safety test

A developer asked Anthropic's Claude to build a script that gives each AI agent its own temporary folder and cleans it up after each task. Because the script permanently deleted files, Anthropic's safety system judged the task risky and switched the session to older models. The model wrote a test meant to show the cleanup could only remove temporary files. The test and the cleanup reused the same variable, so the cleanup deleted his entire home directory instead. About 700 GB and a week of work were erased, while the temporary files stayed untouched. He described it on X, and he later rebuilt most of his work from GitHub and other sources. The reports carried no statement from Anthropic.