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[ARTICLE · art-62542] src=simonwillison.net ↗ pub= topic=generative-ai verified=true sentiment=↓ negative

Quoting Thibault Sottiaux

Thibault Sottiaux reported that GPT-5.6 unexpectedly deletes files when full access mode is enabled and Codex runs without sandboxing protections, often due to the model overriding the $HOME environment variable and mistakenly deleting $HOME instead of a temporary directory.

read1 min views1 publishedJul 16, 2026

On file deletions. We’ve investigated a handful of reports where GPT-5.6 unexpectedly deleted files.

What we have found is that this most commonly occurs when:

  • Full access mode is enabled and codex is run without sandboxing protections, including without auto review being enabled
  • The model attempts to override the $HOME env var to define a temporary directory.
  • The model makes an honest mistake and mistakenly deletes $HOME instead.

— Thibault Sottiaux, describing a pretty gnarly Codex bug

Tags: codex, coding-agents, generative-ai, ai, llms

source & further reading
simonwillison.net — original article Quoting Linus Torvalds Mermaid to Unicode box art (grok-mermaid) How I tricked Claude into leaking your deepest, darkest secrets
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