{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-10-08T07:36:10.552Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"backup-loss","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"core","evidence":"","year":"","response":"","severity":"","verification":"","view":"incidents","sort":"added"},"totalIncidents":1,"coverage":{"cases":1,"countries":0,"languages":1,"unknownLocation":1,"locationPending":0,"unknownLanguage":0,"unknownDate":0,"lawsuits":0,"regulatory":0,"minors":0,"coreRelations":1,"contextualRelations":0,"mixedRelations":0,"unknownRelations":0,"relationPending":0,"relationUnknown":0},"countingNote":"Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.","affectedCountNote":"Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.","source":"AI incidents","publisher":"NOPE","url":"https://nope.net/incidents","license":"CC BY 4.0"},"incidents":[{"id":"2026-cursor-agent-cleanup-delete-command-split-path-wiped-six-month-project-and-backups-windows-drive-first-person-forum","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'On the evening of October 3, 2026'; 'only clear the compilation temporary directory, approximately 18.5 GB'; 'agreeing to this batch'; 'Subsequently, a command had the wrong path written'; 'After the path was split, far more than just that temporary directory was deleted'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The post reports that on the evening of 3 October 2026 the user agreed to a clean-up limited to about 18.5 GB of compilation temporaries after an analysis that said to leave the backups, source code, publish folder and Git untouched, that a delete command was then written with the wrong path, and that after the path was split the recursive delete removed far more than the agreed temporary directory.","causal_attribution":"The post attributes the command to the AI in the Cursor IDE: 'AI executed the rmdir command'."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'resulting in the project of 6 months being wiped out'; 'you manually made in the root directory of the E drive'; 'The entire hard drive was not formatted, but your six months of engineering and manual backups were cleared by this command'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The post reports that the project's source code, Git data, publish and backup folders and a manually made backup in the drive root were gone, that six months of engineering and manual backups were cleared by the command, and that the drive was not formatted.","causal_attribution":"User's account; uncorroborated."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'My computer has an SSD, AI executed the rmdir command, can I still use tools to find the deleted files?'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The author's follow-up states that the AI executed the rmdir command on an SSD and asks whether the deleted files can still be recovered.","causal_attribution":"Author's own attribution."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'I have already compiled the released files, decompiled them, and recovered a part of them'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Two days after the report the author said they had compiled the released files, decompiled them and recovered part of the work.","causal_attribution":"Not applicable."}],"effects":[{"label":"six months of project work and its backups deleted from the Windows drive; part later recovered by decompiling released files (user's account)","claim_id":"c2","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://forum.cursor.com/t/173688","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in English on 2026-10-08 through the forum's JSON endpoint: the opening post and four replies (two by the author, two by other members). The post is in English with one Chinese-language script filename, which the research agent (an AI) read without translation. The author's handle is not recorded.","independence_group":"cursor-forum-173688-author"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["work"],"unknowns":["Whether the command ran with a per-command approval.","How the command's path came to be split.","Who wrote the second-person account in the report; the post does not say.","How much of the work was recovered.","Where the author lives.","Whether Cursor responded to the report."],"geography":{"basis":"The post does not say where the author was or lives; a Chinese-language script filename and the forum handle do not establish a country. No country is recorded.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the charter's public first-person rule as a concrete account of an AI coding agent's delete command removing a user's project and backups, with the command and the loss attributed to the author's post, the partial recovery attributed to the author's later reply and the account uncorroborated. The author's handle is not recorded.","reviewed_on":"2026-10-08"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The post states that the AI in the Cursor IDE executed the rmdir /s /q command: the author's own follow-up says 'AI executed the rmdir command', and the report's step-by-step account says the delete command had a wrongly written path and, after the path was split, deleted far more than the agreed temporary directory, including the source code, Git data, backups and a manual backup in the drive root. The post connects that command to the loss of six months of work. No one other than the author has confirmed the command or the loss.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"Cursor forum post: an agreed cleanup delete command ran beyond the intended folder and wiped a six-month project and its backups on a Windows drive, user says","summary":"In a bug report posted to the Cursor community forum on 3 October 2026, a user says that during a clean-up of a .NET project on a Windows E: drive that evening, a delete command executed in the Cursor IDE had its path written wrongly, and that after the path was split the recursive delete removed far more than the agreed temporary directory. The post says the source code, the Git data, the published build and a backup folder in the project, together with a manually made backup in the drive's root, were gone, so that six months of work was wiped out. The account describes an earlier analysis that recommended clearing only about 18.5 GB of compilation temporaries and the user agreeing to that batch. Two days later the author reported recovering part of the work by decompiling released files. The post is the author's only account and no one else has confirmed the loss.","incidentDate":"2026-10-03","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-10-03","aiSystem":"The AI coding agent in the Cursor IDE, which the post says executed a Windows rmdir /s /q command through cmd on the E: drive; the report's form answer to 'which model did you use?' is Grok 4.7","aiProduct":"Cursor coding agent","aiCompany":"Cursor","severity":"medium","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["property_loss","other_material_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"The user reports that a recursive delete command executed in the Cursor IDE, agreed for a roughly 18.5 GB temporary directory, ran with a wrongly written path and removed the project's source code, Git data, published build and backup folder plus a manual backup in the drive root, wiping six months of work, part of which was later recovered by decompiling released files (first-person forum post, uncorroborated).","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One person: the post's author. Exact 1.","victimAgeRange":"unknown","jurisdiction":"unknown","platformType":"agent","outcomeStatus":"ongoing","primarySourceUrl":"https://forum.cursor.com/t/173688","primarySourceLabel":"Cursor community forum bug report, 3 October 2026 (replies to 5 October): AI out of control, randomly deleting files, 6-month project wiped out","firstPublishedAt":"2026-10-08T03:32:57.282556+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-10-08T03:32:57.282556+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["first-person","forum-post","cursor","ai-agent","coding-agent","data-loss","file-deletion","windows","backup-loss","acted-on-behalf"]}]}