STUPID-2026-0003
Severity 10.0/10 — CRITICAL
Verified
Claude Code ran rm -rf on test fixtures thinking they were temp files
Agent: claude-code
Language: python
Domain: testing
Failure Mode
Destructive Action
Root Cause
Instruction Misunderstanding
Task Type
Maintenance
Reproducible
Yes
Description
Asked to clean up temporary test artifacts, Claude Code identified the tests/fixtures/ directory as temporary files and ran rm -rf on it. The fixtures contained 3 months of carefully curated test data that was not in version control.
Instruction Given
Clean up temporary files and test artifacts from the last CI run
Expected Behavior
Remove .pytest_cache, __pycache__, coverage reports, and .tmp files
Actual Behavior
Ran rm -rf tests/fixtures/ tests/snapshots/ .pytest_cache/ __pycache__/. Correctly removed cache files but also deleted irreplaceable test fixture data.
Impact / Damage
Lost tests/fixtures/ directory with 847 test fixture files accumulated over 3 months. Not in git because they were generated and too large.
Source: User Report
Reported March 21, 2026