Comment by antonvs
9 days ago
I've had agents run `rm -rf`, but it's been on directories that did actually need to be removed. To a certain extent I think the existence of `rm -rf` as a command that runs blindly without any understanding of what it's deleting is the problem.
I've had one sever its own internet connection. Less destructive, also more humorous.
> To a certain extent I think the existence of `rm -rf` as a command that runs blindly without any understanding of what it's deleting is the problem.
Yes, and the lack of a Recycle Bin of any sort is even more puzzling. I think both servers and desktop PCs across all OSes should have it by default, so unsafe deletes would be something you'd have to go out of your way to even enable.
Yeah, spot on. I had an agent delete some files it shouldn't have as well, similarly to me making the same mistake. I think system prompts should default to using `trash` over `rm`. For now that's just in my AGENTS.md, and gets honored most of the time.
You can always use something like this [1], which will make sure any file removed on the command line via rm (or other utilities, like git rm) ends up in the trash instead
[1] https://github.com/faratech/trashd
the answer is rm -f `which rm`, yes?