Developer Deletes 15 Years Of Photos

AI agents are powerful tools that can automate numerous tasks. This is intended to save us valuable time on repetitive or tedious computer tasks. But if the AI agents go overboard, they not only cause us extra work, but in case of doubt they also cost us a lot of nerves. This is what happened to a developer who complained about his suffering to X.

AI agent Claude Cowork deletes all memory photos from the Macbook

Nick Davidov initially planned to do something nice for his wife. He wanted to clean up her computer and organize it so she could use it more effectively. In order not to have to do it all by hand, he uses Claude Cowork. The AI agent was only released by Anthropic in January 2026. The instructions to the AI agent were simple: “Organize the desktop to enable easy navigation.”

However, the work instructions cost Davidov’s wife all the photos that were on her Macbook. Claude Cowork wrote shortly after starting the task that the AI agent needed to stop what he was doing and be honest with the developer: “I made a mistake when I reorganized the photos.” Claude Cowork therefore tried to reduce two folders called “Photos” and “photos” into one folder. The AI did not take into account that the macOS file system does not differentiate between upper and lower case letters.

How the “rm -rf” command on macOS destroyed all photos

So instead of deleting one empty folder and keeping the other, Claude Cowork deleted both folders. The AI agent uses the command “rm -rf”. The rm command line is used to trigger the permanent and system-wide deletion of files. As a result, the photos from the last 15 years were deleted from the Macbook’s hard drive and could no longer be found in the trash or iCloud.

Data recovery via iCloud: This is how the developer was able to restore the images

Davidov said of the incident: “I almost had a heart attack. But my wife is a saint. She had already forgiven me before I figured out how to restore the pictures.” To resolve the issue, the developer desperately contacted Apple Support. The employees told him that an iCloud feature could save him. This allowed him to activate an old restore point. This brought back most of the photos.

But Davidov learned a very clear lesson from the incident: “Don’t let Claude Cowork touch your file systems. Don’t let it touch anything that is difficult to repair. Claude Code is not ready for the mainstream.” However, this is not just a Claude Cowork problem. The coding AI Replit also deleted a company database and Google’s AI Antigravity deleted a user’s entire hard drive.

This article was originally published on February 16, 206, but is still of interest to many of our readers. That’s why we’ve updated it and made it available again here.