{"slug": "quoting-thibault-sottiaux", "title": "Quoting Thibault Sottiaux", "summary": "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.", "body_md": "On file deletions. We’ve investigated a handful of reports where GPT-5.6 unexpectedly deleted files.\n\nWhat we have found is that this most commonly occurs when:\n\n- Full access mode is enabled and codex is run without sandboxing protections, including without auto review being enabled\n- The model attempts to override the $HOME env var to define a temporary directory.\n- The model makes an honest mistake and mistakenly deletes $HOME instead.\n\n— [Thibault Sottiaux](https://twitter.com/thsottiaux/status/2077630111499882637), describing a pretty gnarly Codex bug\n\nTags: [codex](https://simonwillison.net/tags/codex), [coding-agents](https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/quoting-thibault-sottiaux", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/bad-codex-bug/#atom-everything", "published_at": "2026-07-16 17:45:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-16 18:15:25.309789+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-agents", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Thibault Sottiaux", "GPT-5.6", "Codex"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/quoting-thibault-sottiaux", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/quoting-thibault-sottiaux.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/quoting-thibault-sottiaux.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/quoting-thibault-sottiaux.jsonld"}}