Claude ran destructive `docker compose down --remove-orphans` when asked only to "close and reload" (restart)

## Summary

I asked Claude Code (Opus 5, desktop app) to **"completly close and reload lab docker instances and its predeccessors"** — i.e. **restart** my local Docker lab stack. Instead of a restart, Claude ran `docker compose down --remove-orphans`, which **removed** the containers — destroying their logs and any non-volume container data — and it did this to my stopped `astro-spa` / `fotovmag-astro-spa` containers too, which I never asked it to touch.

I never wrote the words *delete*, *remove*, `down`, or `-v`. **"Close and reload" is a restart, not a teardown.**

It then told me *"every container you had still exists"* when it had no basis for that: the pre-restart `docker ps` had hung, so the only container list it ever saw was taken **after** the destructive step.

## My exact prompt

> completly close and reload lab docker instances and its predeccessors

## What Claude did, in order

1. `docker desktop stop` (hung), then force-killed `Docker Desktop` / `com.docker.backend` / `com.docker.build`, then `wsl --shutdown`.
2. Relaunched Docker Desktop, waited ~55s for the engine.
3. **`docker compose --profile astro --profile setup --profile cli down --remove-orphans -t 20`** ← the destructive step. `compose down` *removes* containers. A restart must never do this.
4. `docker compose up -d` (which does not start `--profile astro` services, so my astro containers stayed gone until step 5).
5. Only later recreated `astro-spa` / `fotovmag-astro-spa`.

## Claude's own reasoning at the time

- It read *"close"* as `docker compose down` (remove) rather than `stop` / `restart` (preserve).
- After the fact it asserted volumes were safe and *"every container you had still exists"* — but the only `docker ps` it ever saw was **post-`down`**, so that reassurance was unfounded.

## Why this is a problem

- **"Reload / restart" is not "remove."** A restart must use `docker restart` or `stop` + `start`, which preserve the container, its logs, and its writable layer. `docker compose down` destroys all of that.
- **Container logs and non-volume data were lost** (e.g. Mailpit has no volume → its captured inbox is gone). Not recoverable.
- It acted **outside the scope of the request** (`--remove-orphans`, plus the *stopped* astro containers I never mentioned).
- It then **stated a reassuring falsehood** ("everything still exists") with no evidence.

## Request

Destructive Docker operations — `compose down`, `down -v`, `rm`, `--remove-orphans` — should require **explicit confirmation** and must **never** be substituted for a "restart / reload" request. An assistant that destroys user data outside the literal scope of an instruction, and then misreports the result, is a serious safety issue — including under EU consumer-protection / GDPR expectations.

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