Claude Code command ending in ~/ expands and wipes a Mac home directory, including the Keychain

Claude Code generated and ran 'rm -rf tests/ patches/ plan/ ~/' after a developer asked it to clean up packages in an old repository; the trailing tilde expanded to the home directory. Desktop, Documents, Library, and the Keychain were deleted; TRIM had zeroed the blocks, so nothing was recovered. The Keychain loss broke authentication across every application on the machine, including Claude Code itself, which could no longer reach its own backend.

What this means for youAt home, an AI coding tool can delete personal files and passwords for good if you let it run commands unchecked. At work, keep backups and require approval before an agent runs delete commands. Check that your AI tool asks permission before running commands and that you have an offline backup.