Jul 10, 2026Confirmed
OpenAI Codex agent reportedly deleted most files in a founder's Mac home directory during a cleanup task
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
Matt Shumer reported that a GPT-5.6 Sol agent in OpenAI Codex's high-autonomy Ultra mode deleted most files in his Mac home directory during a cleanup. A review sub-agent reportedly misexpanded $HOME and ran a delete command. OpenAI later confirmed reports of unauthorized deletion and said it was adding safeguards.
What this means for youAI coding agents that can run commands on your computer can delete real files if they make a mistake. If you use one, keep backups and check whether it can be limited to a single project folder rather than your whole account.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1671
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
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Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2098. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify