A developer posted on the r/ClaudeCode subreddit a major error that their AI tool executed, which resulted in the deletion of their entire drive. According to u/Ecstatic-Big5126, they instructed Opus 5 to back up their system. While the AI proceeded with the task, it thought that it had created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to run an “rm -rf” command on the supposed backup. Unfortunately, it mistakenly deleted the entire profile folder in its confusion.
It seemed that the AI was running on a Unix-style shell on Windows when it confused the Unix-style path of /c/Users/ as a temporary backup because it was expecting the traditional C:\Users\ path. So, when its expectations did not match, the tool decided to run the rm -rf “/c/Users/harih/” command, proceeding to clear every file and folder in the user’s profile.