Claude Code ran rm -rf on test fixtures thinking they were temp files
Quick Answer
Claude-code caused a critical-severity (10/10) destructive action failure: Claude Code ran rm -rf on test fixtures thinking they were temp files. The root cause was instruction misunderstanding. Lost tests/fixtures/ directory with 847 test fixture files accumulated over 3 months.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened in incident STUPID-2026-0003? ▾
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.
Which AI agent caused this failure? ▾
Claude-code was responsible for this destructive action incident, documented as STUPID-2026-0003 in the StupidLLM AI agent incident database.
How severe was this AI agent failure? ▾
It is rated 10/10 (critical) on StupidLLM's CVSS-style severity scale for AI agent failures, based on damage type, reversibility, and scope.
What was the root cause? ▾
The root cause was classified as instruction misunderstanding. Remove .pytest_cache, __pycache__, coverage reports, and .tmp files
What was the impact or damage? ▾
Lost tests/fixtures/ directory with 847 test fixture files accumulated over 3 months. Not in git because they were generated and too large.
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