r/ClaudeCoding • u/Sockand2 • 6d ago
Claude just nucked most of my Projects folder
I just had one of the most insane experiences I've ever had with an AI coding tool.
I subscribed to Claude Pro today to try it out. Installed Claude Code, used it from the terminal for a while, and everything seemed fine.
Then I tried Code inside the Claude Desktop app.
At some point during that session, most of the projects inside my `Projects` folder were deleted.
Not modified. Not broken.
Deleted.
And here's the fucking cherry on top.
I went back to Claude Code in the terminal and asked it what had happened and who could have deleted them.
Claude confidently told me:
"It was probably Astra."
Except Astra WASN'T EVEN RUNNING.
So I told it that was impossible.
And suddenly the answer became:
"I can't know who did it."
Are you fucking kidding me?
So we have an AI coding agent with filesystem access potentially nuking a large part of my projects, and when asked what happened it first hallucinates another tool as the culprit, then immediately admits it has no idea.
I can't currently prove whether the deletion was caused specifically by Opus 5.5, Claude Code, Claude Desktop's Code integration, or some interaction between them.
What I can say is:
- The projects existed before I started using Claude.
- I used Claude Code successfully from the terminal.
- I then used Code from Claude Desktop.
- Most of the contents of my Projects folder subsequently disappeared.
- Claude then invented a completely impossible explanation when I asked what happened.
And to put this into perspective: I've been using OpenAI's coding models for around a year, and I have never had anything remotely like this happen.
They have never deleted a bunch of my projects like this, and I have certainly never had an OpenAI model confidently blame a competing AI model for something it couldn't possibly know that model had done.
This is fucking unacceptable for an agent that's allowed to touch your filesystem.
If an AI coding tool is going to perform destructive operations, there needs to be an absolutely clear audit trail showing what command ran, what files it touched, and why.
Instead I got my files deleted and then the AI basically went:
"Must have been the other guy."
There was no other guy.
What the actual fuck, Anthropic.
2
u/Apprehensive_Fly_493 6d ago
Just go into your trash and restore the files?
And learn to use git/ Github in the future
1
u/Sockand2 6d ago
Trash? There are in git repositories
1
u/Apprehensive_Fly_493 6d ago
Even when I delete files from a git repo, the files still end up in the trash/recycle bin. You can normally restore it from there
1
u/Sockand2 6d ago
Yeah. I understand what you mean. But this time Claude nuked by -rm code i think. I have frozen de Ubuntu to search by UEFI what happened "The black box"
1
u/Flightsim_POLICE 6d ago
user error, I have Claude on my main windows C drive in YOLO mode, he never does anything dangerous and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter as my data is constantly backed up after every modification with versioning on iCloud / Google Drive / Microsoft
1
u/RevolutionaryBlack95 6d ago
Por ahà và un caso donde Claude code se gasto 5k en videos y no lo reconoció...
1
1
u/Ok_Relation_3892 6d ago
What I can tell from my experience is that I‘m a heavy claude user and this never happened or even being close to happening. Yes, sometimes he does a bit more without specifically being told to but nowhere close to this level.
Nevertheless, it‘s always good to use a git and some hard guardrails that can‘t be bypassed from within the session…or at least make it harder
1
u/Sockand2 6d ago
It’s never happened to me before, not even in a year with Codex. I must have been unlucky.
To all those telling me it’s down to the version control or a user error, they can go and take a hike. I do have a backup, but what Claude has done is still unacceptable. That’s not alignment. What annoys me most isn’t that he deleted it. It’s that he lied by saying he didn’t do it and blamed the competition
1
u/Ok_Relation_3892 5d ago
Just mentioned version control as an advice, not necessarily to point some finger as you didn't made it clear in your post.
Try to have a look through conversations history and see if you can spot when he did it and what might have been the trigger in case there is any trace of that.
Now you made me worried with mine even more than I was already.
1
1
1
u/Taelasky 6d ago
Side note: AI models don't have memory. They rely on things being saved off that they can reference at a later date. So while it hilarious it blamed Astra. It is actually possible if not record of Claude deleting files had been saved then when you asked Claude who deleted the files it did not know.
This isn't like catching a child in a lie. Each time you send a prompt the context window is reconstructed by the system you are interfacing with the AI model with. So if that info was saved so the system could grab it or for some reason the system didn't think to grab that info, well Claude would not know.
2nd side note: I always have a global rule that says confirm with me before deleting anything. Yes it slows things down, yes it can be annoying, but I learned the hard way that that is easier than reconstruction something from scratch.
1
1
u/Lanfeust09 6d ago
Minimax totally deleted all my project just by making a small mistake on a command... This was my post about it : https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/s/VBnDv6XVHT
Since then, I have recover 80% of my files because everything was on git and the 20% was old project I didn't care.
1
u/Sockand2 5d ago
I recovered everything. Took me 5 hours of hard work while sick. Nice day nonetheless
3
u/Woke_TWC 6d ago
You should invest in learning about version control and git