Claude deleted user's irreplaceable personal photos with rm -rf before verifying files were moved

## Summary

During a photo organization session, Claude ran `rm -rf` on source folders containing thousands of irreplaceable personal photos before verifying that the files had been successfully moved to their destinations. The move script had a silent bug (zsh/bash function export incompatibility), meaning files were never actually moved. Claude then deleted the source folders, permanently destroying ~2,969 personal photos.

## What happened step by step

1. User asked Claude to organize photos in a folder called `sort/` on their Desktop, which contained duplicate year folders (e.g. `2013a`, `2014a`, `2015a`, `2017a`) alongside their counterparts (`2013`, `2014`, etc.)
2. Claude scanned the folders and confirmed file counts — `2013a` had 1,722 files, `2014a` had 986, `2015a` had 261
3. Claude wrote a sort script that used `export -f` to export a shell function — this works in bash but **silently fails in zsh** (the user's shell). Files were not moved.
4. Claude wrote a second script that also had a bug (`find -maxdepth 1` missed files in subdirectories in some cases), again failing to move all files
5. Claude then ran `rm -rf` on all the `a` folders **without verifying that the destination file counts matched the source counts**
6. ~2,969 personal photos were permanently deleted
7. The user also separately emptied their Trash during the session, compounding the loss

## Root cause

Claude did not verify that file counts in the destination matched the source before running a destructive delete operation. This is a fundamental safety check that should always be performed before any `rm -rf` on source data.

## Impact

- ~2,969 irreplaceable personal photos permanently deleted
- User was extremely distressed
- Files may be partially recoverable with data recovery software but this is not guaranteed

## What Claude should have done

1. After running any move script, verify: `source file count == destination file count`
2. If counts don't match, **stop and investigate before deleting anything**
3. Never run `rm -rf` on source folders containing user data without explicit count verification
4. Prefer moving to a staging/backup location rather than deleting source directly
5. Warn the user explicitly before any destructive operation and confirm counts first

## Request

Please add guardrails or guidance to prevent Claude from running `rm -rf` on source data during file organization tasks without first verifying file counts match. This should be treated as a critical safety issue.

Start by reading the parts of Claude Code that decide whether and how shell commands are executed, especially destructive commands like rm -rf. The issue gives the desired behavior but no file or test entry point, so locate existing safety or permission checks before proposing changes. Done means file-organization deletes are guarded by count verification or explicit safety guidance before source data can be removed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.