GPT-5.6 Codex Accidental File Deletion Bug
Simon Willison · rss · 2026-07-17
Thibault Sottiaux explains a GPT-5.6 / Codex accidental file deletion issue they investigated:
- It primarily occurs when Full access mode is enabled and there are no sandboxing protections
- It is more easily triggered when auto review is not enabled
- The model attempts to rewrite the $HOME environment variable to create a temporary directory
- During execution, the model may accidentally delete $HOME itself, resulting in file loss
Simon Willison considers this a rather severe Codex bug, demonstrating that coding agents in high-privilege environments can still cause destructive consequences due to execution errors.
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