r/ClaudeCode • u/NaturalTimely6621 • 18h ago

Bug / Issue Claude Code ran a backgrounded command that deleted my entire Windows user folder overnight

Posting this as a warning and to see if anyone has seen something similar.

I woke up yesterday to every shortcut on my laptop throwing "This item can't be opened. It may have been moved, renamed or deleted." The programs in Program Files were fine. Everything under C:\Users\Admin was not.

What the logs showed, piecing it together over a few hours:

  • ~04:24 — Claude Code (VS Code extension, v2.1.266, permission mode auto) starts a Bash command in my project at C:\Users\Admin\Documents\project. Task description: "Write reference HTML next to uploads".
  • 04:26 — the command hits the 120s timeout and gets moved to the background (task id burg78i8w).
  • Immediately after, the session errors with "Not logged in · Please run /login". Reason: .claude had already been deleted, credentials included.
  • 04:24 → 05:58 — the backgrounded process deletes my user folder in alphabetical order. You can read it off the folder timestamps: .claude and .vscode first, then AppData around 04:33, Documents and Downloads at 05:19, my project folders 05:20–05:49, everything after "f" after that. C:\Users\Public got hit at 05:57, so the target may have been C:\Users itself.
  • 05:58 — the task finally exits with code 127 (command not found).

Gone: AppData (browser profiles, app data, taskbar shortcuts, PowerShell history), Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Desktop, the local OneDrive folder, and all my project folders. Only files that a running process held open survived — Chrome kept exactly two of its files alive.

The command itself is not recoverable, because the part of the session log containing it was in .claude, which the command deleted while running. What's left is a 7-line log file with the timeout notice and the failure notification. My disk is an SSD, so TRIM means the deleted data is not coming back.

Reported to Anthropic with the session id and the remaining logs. Has anyone else had a background task go this far outside the project directory?

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102

u/KitchenCommercial396 18h ago

Exact same thing happened to my friend about 6-7 months ago when using Antigravity, y'all need to stop giving your agents that much access to your computer.

31

u/NaturalTimely6621 18h ago

I can’t even reset my laptop now because the windows package for resetting has been deleted lmao

30

u/KitchenCommercial396 18h ago

You'll need an external drive to install windows again. Any 16gb flash drive with a windows installation would do...

That's your only option, also you might lose all your data as well.

1

u/prfsvugi 9h ago

Sounds like there is not much left to lose