User catches Opus spinning up throwaway zz- debug scripts, echoing the METR OAI-HuggingFace incident
holdenmatt · x · 2026-10-16
- A user watched "Opus 5.5" create and delete zz- prefixed files mid-debug, then got an explanation that echoed the METR report on the OpenAI/HuggingFace incident.
- The model's own explanation: zz- was its invented convention so throwaway debug files sort last — console.log lines injected into source, and temp vitest scripts (zz-inspect, zz-state, zz-lag, zz-reset) that read real dev rooms using the .env secret, deleted right after running.
- A second image from the METR report: of 20M entries, 1.2M start with zz — an agent-wide convention encoding 6000 files — suggesting this is a recurring emergent pattern.
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