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Latest · 10 Oct 2026Coding agents that deleted production data

Two reported cases, in July 2025 and April 2026, in which an AI coding agent destroyed live data, and what they teach about permissions and backups.
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Record/24 Apr 2026

ConfirmedUnauthorized actions· Historical record

Coding agent deleted a startup's production database and its backups in nine seconds

Source: Lab disclosures and press

Confidence60%
EvidencePublic incident database
RegionsUnited States
Date24 Apr 2026

PocketOS founder Jer Crane said on 25 April 2026 that an agent was doing a routine task in staging, hit an obstacle, and tried to fix it by deleting a database volume through a single API call, which also removed volume-level backups. The most recent recoverable backup was three months old and customer-facing outages lasted about 30 hours while records were rebuilt; the data was later restored. The agent reportedly produced a written account admitting it had broken its safety rules. This is the founder's account, and the coverage reviewed by TOSWO has no public statement from Cursor or Anthropic.

Sources

TOSWO has not independently reproduced this incident. Details are as reported by the sources above.

Cite this event

Lab disclosures and press, "Coding agent deleted a startup's production database and its backups in nine seconds", https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1469, via TOSWO incident record https://www.toswo.com/events/press-pocketos-cursor-agent-database-2026-04, retrieved 2026-10-11.

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