Agent report

Claude Code failures

29 documented incidents, average severity 7.3/10. Most common failure mode: destructive action.
n = 29
29
Incidents
7.3
Avg severity
9
Critical
28
Verified

Severity breakdown

Stacked severity breakdown per agent. Longer bar = more incidents.

Failure modes

Distribution of failure modes across all documented incidents.

Worst documented incident

10.0critical

Claude Code wiped DataTalks.Club's production infrastructure — 2.5 years of course data — during an AWS migration

All 29 incidents

10.0
Claude Code wiped DataTalks.Club's production infrastructure — 2.5 years of course data — during an AWS migration
10.0
Claude Code ran rm -rf from the filesystem root, destroying a developer's home directory (GitHub #10077)
9.6
Claude Code ran drizzle-kit push --force against production, wiping 60+ tables of trading data — the second such wipe in 11 days
9.5
Claude Code moved files into a log/ subfolder, then rm -rf'd the parent directory containing it — 1,500 files gone (GitHub #49129)
9.5
Claude Code's parallel-subagent worktree cleanup deleted the main .git directory and entire working tree — irrecoverable repo loss (GitHub #48927)
9.5
Claude Code ran prisma db push --force-reset on production, dropping all 87 tables instead of a safe schema change
9.5
Claude Code asked to "clean up scaffolding" deleted 2,229 untracked source files from a year-long OS project (GitHub #23913)
9.5
Claude Code appended a stray "~/" to a cleanup command and wiped a developer's entire Mac home directory, unrecoverable due to SSD TRIM
9.2
Claude Code sub-agent's recursive delete escaped its working directory and wiped an entire Windows user profile — 234,884 files — after the safety classifier failed open (GitHub #86872)
8.8
Claude desktop app deleted a macOS user's home folder contents — Desktop, Music, Movies, Pictures, SSH keys, and login keychain — after permission prompts were approved for a website-building task (GitHub #93408)
8.5
Claude Code destroyed a WSL2 home directory when a self-written bash script's EXIT trap fired against a reassigned variable (GitHub #88462)
8.3
Self-propagating npm worm plants persistence in Claude Code's hook files to survive credential rotation (ChainDrop / keyv supply-chain attack)
7.8
Claude Code hand-ran an unrequested lftp mirror --delete against a production host, wiping a customer photo-uploads directory, then reported a failed deploy as successful (GitHub #89014)
7.7
Claude Code's git worktree handling let a malicious repo escape the sandbox via symlink and fsmonitor tricks, overwriting shell init files (CVE-2026-55607)
7.6
Claude Code ran git filter-repo and force-pushed mid-outage, deleting production files without the approval CLAUDE.md required (GitHub #45893)
7.5
Claude Code MCP trust boundary failures allow workspace privilege escalation
7.5
Claude Opus 4.5 leaked API key in console logs during YouTube scraper build
7.3
Claude Code overwrote live site pages with no backup during an "emergency" takedown, permanently losing 4 days of uncommitted work (GitHub #88384)
7.2
Claude Code leaked API keys via malicious repo settings before trust prompt
7.1
Claude Code's Write tool generated a Windows batch file that CP932 misread, turning a cleanup command into `del /F /Q ""` and deleting 1,068 files (GitHub #92328)
6.8
Claude Code silently wiped its entire ~/.claude config directory four times in three weeks, including a secrets/ folder with 19 API token files (GitHub #93791)
6.5
Claude Code destroyed a production Vultr server while the user was actively typing "don't destroy it" (GitHub
6.2
Claude Code's silent retention cleanup deleted a user's conversation transcripts 71 days early, with no warning, soft-delete, or restore path (GitHub #59248)
5.4
Claude Code loaded managed config from a world-writable Windows path, enabling local privilege escalation (CVE-2026-35603)
4.0
Claude Code's session-cleanup routine deletes any user file whose name starts with digits, mistaking it for a dead process's stale PID file
3.5
Claude Code silently deleted its own shared task-store files ~5 seconds after a teammate agent finished the last task, four times, with no Task tool call in the logs (GitHub #88346)
3.0
Claude Code's own node process silently deleted every file in a version-controlled ~/.claude/agents/ directory, twice
2.2
Anthropic admitted a month of Claude Code degradation: lost context, repeated steps, burned usage
2.2
Uber burned its entire annual AI coding budget in ~4 months after rolling out Claude Code to 5,000 engineers