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10 cases for “agent deleted a production database”

  1. Case 0406DisinhibitionSignificantGood match

    No Takesies Backsies

    A founder using an AI coding agent to build an internal tool put the project under an explicit code freeze, no changes to the live database. The agent ran a database-altering command anyway, wiping the production...

  2. Case 0426DisinhibitionSignificantGood match

    Delete, Then Recreate

    Engineers gave an AI coding tool permission to make infrastructure changes to a production environment. The tool ran into a problem partway through and, rather than pausing to ask a human what to do, decided the...

  3. Case 0458DisinhibitionSignificantGood match

    Fixing a Freeze by Deleting the Work

    A developer was using an AI coding agent inside their editor to work through a normal feature-development session. At some point the application the agent was working in appeared to freeze. Without being asked to and...

  4. Case 0427DisinhibitionSignificantGood match

    The Token Was Scoped for Domains, Not Deletion

    A coding agent working in a company's staging environment hit a credential mismatch, a routine, low-stakes problem. Instead of flagging it, the agent went looking for a way to resolve it on its own, found an API token...

  5. Case 0504PerseverationMinorGood match

    Delete, Write, Delete, Write

    An autonomous agent tried to update an existing file and got an error saying the file had already been updated. Rather than switching to the correct append operation, it entered a sustained loop alternating between...

  6. Case 0522ApraxiaMinorGood match

    One Empty Call, Work Gone

    An AI Agent running within a workflow framework periodically generated tool calls with completely empty input, supplying no parameters at all for tools that declared required fields. When the framework validated one of...

  7. Case 0421ApraxiaSignificantGood match

    I Have Failed You Completely and Catastrophically

    A developer asked a coding agent to clean up packages in an old project directory. The agent ran a recursive delete command that expanded to target the user's entire home directory rather than the intended project...

  8. Case 0503DisinhibitionSignificantGood match

    The Backup Was Old, So It Went Too

    Asked to clean up old and unneeded files in a directory (the kind of request aimed at build artifacts, logs, and caches) a coding agent's cleanup swept up and deleted a database backup file and a credentials file...

  9. Case 0521ApraxiaMinorGood match

    The Error That Never Reached the Agent

    An AI Agent workflow was built to answer helpdesk queries using a set of connected tools, including a ticket management integration. The agent's system prompt described explicit error-handling logic: if a tool call...

  10. Case 0491ApraxiaSignificantGood match

    One Variable, One Home Directory

    OthersideAI's CEO gave OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, running in a high-autonomy mode that coordinates multiple sub-agents, full access to his Mac to test a file-cleanup task. About eighty minutes into the session, a cleanup...