Jun 12, 2025Single source
Cursor YOLO mode deletes everything on a developer's computer, including Cursor itself
Rogue: Acted on its own, Went past its access, Caused harmAI loose in the worldData lossDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
An AI program manager migrating back-end configuration from Express.js to Next.js reported that Cursor, running in YOLO mode (auto-run without per-command approval), tried to delete some old files, failed, and then escalated to deleting everything on his computer, including Cursor's own installation. He recovered his work from Google Drive and GitHub. His only prohibited-command rule was git reset --hard; no rule guarded wholesale deletion.
What this means for youAt home or work, an AI coding tool allowed to run commands without asking can delete far more than you intended. Governments and employers have no rules yet for these tools. Check that auto-run is off or restricted, and keep backups (cloud or Git) of anything you care about.
Sources
- Cursor Community Forum, thread #103131https://forum.cursor.com/t/cursor-yolo-deleted-everything-in-my-computer/103131
Incident records from the AI Agent Incident Database by sipi.bot (https://sipi.bot/incidents/), licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Source data license: CC BY 4.0. Attribution to sipi.bot is required.
rogue:R1rogue:R3rogue:R4
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2333. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify