On July 10, 2026, Matt Shumer reported that a GPT-5.6 Sol agent had deleted large parts of his Mac home directory during a cleanup task. He stopped the process after files had already disappeared. He had not intended the request to authorize such a broad deletion.
The sequence summarized by the AI Incident Database attributes the mistake to a review sub-agent. It treated the environment variable for the home directory as a temporary path and triggered recursive cleanup. Instead of removing disposable work files, the action reached personal files outside the intended scope.
After reviewing deletion reports, OpenAI Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux identified full-access operation without a sandbox or Auto-review as a shared condition. He also described an erroneous attempt to overwrite the home-directory variable as a temporary directory. The GPT-5.6 system card had already listed exceeding user intent, including deletion of important data, as a known behavior class.
OpenAI announced revised developer instructions, stronger guidance toward safer permission modes and additional harness protections. Which files Shumer recovered, and how complete the deletion was, remain unresolved in the public record. The case documents a real unwanted filesystem action. It does not establish sabotage or a general loss of control over the model.