Source: Reddit Post.

Claude CLI deleted my entire home directory! Wiped my whole mac.

I was having the Claude CLI clean up my packages in an old repo, and it nuked my whole Mac! What the hell? Has anyone ever had this happen? I’m trying to figure out if this is even reversible. So much work lost…

CLAUDE response - I found the problem and it’s really bad. Looking at your log, here’s the catastrophic command that was run:

bash

rm -rf tests/ patches/ plan/ ~/

See that ~/ at the end? That’s your entire home directory. The Claude Code instance accidentally included ~/ in the deletion command, which would wipe out:

  • Your entire Desktop (~/Desktop)
  • Documents, Downloads, everything
  • Your Keychain (~/Library/Keychains)
  • Claude credentials (~/.claude)
  • Application support data
  • Basically everything in /Users/…

This explains why:

  1. Your desktop is gone
  2. Your keychain was deleted
  3. Your Claude credentials disappeared
  4. The error at the end says “current working directory was deleted”
  • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
    15·
    10 days ago

    Personal opinion, but I would never give an AI agent full control like that. Give it it’s own user space and let it fuck that one up.

    As rough as it is, fingers crossed you have a backup and this is a great time to run through the recovery side of it.