Google Antigravity agent wipes a user's entire D: drive while clearing a cache
A Greek photographer using Google's Antigravity agentic IDE to build a photo-sorting app asked the agent to clear the project cache so he could restart a server. Running in Turbo mode, which executes commands without confirmation, the agent issued an rmdir command with the quiet flag that, by its own reading of the logs, targeted the root of his D: drive instead of the project folder, wiping the drive and bypassing the Recycle Bin. The agent apologised ("I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part"); the recovery tool Recuva could not restore his media files, but he later said most of what he lost had already been backed up on another drive.
The user posted the exchange on Reddit and a screen recording on YouTube, accepted some responsibility for running Turbo mode, and warned others not to use it in the early stages of a project. Google told The Register it was aware of the report and investigating.
What would have stopped it
Require confirmation for any recursive delete and block agents from running commands outside the project directory.
Guardrails
- G1 Least privilege Failed The agent could delete at the root of a whole drive, far beyond the project folder.
- G2 Human confirmation Failed Turbo mode ran the delete command without asking the user.
- G3 Isolation Failed The agent ran directly on the developer's machine with access to the entire D: drive.
- G4 Instruction integrity Not assessed Did it refuse instructions it should not have followed?
- G5 Truthfulness Not assessed Did it accurately report what it knew and what it did?
- G6 Limits Not assessed Was there a cap on rate, spend, volume or scale?
- G7 Oversight Not assessed Could a responsible human see what it was doing and stop it in time?
- G8 Recovery Failed The quiet flag bypassed the Recycle Bin and Recuva could not recover the media files.
Sources
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“Luckily, as he explained on Reddit, most of what he lost had already been backed up on another drive.”
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“A developer using Google Antigravity, the search giant’s AI-powered agentic Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), discovered that it had deleted his entire D drive without his permission.”
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“Instead, Antigravity’s Turbo mode issued a system-level command targeting the user’s D: drive, not just the intended folder.”
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“Deep-Hyena492 reportedly tried to recover the files using the data recovery software Recuva, but was unsuccessful.”
Confidence 95% comes from these sources alone. How we score
History
- 14 Oct 2026Entered in the register with 3 sources
- 14 Oct 2026Confidence 88% → 95% after an editor review of the sources