Several times I’ve seen Cursor delete multiple source files without explanation. I finally got a screen recording of it in action. You can see in the recording that the project opens fine, then once I submit a prompt, at least a dozen files are instantly deleted.
Steps to Reproduce
I replicated the same behavior 4 or 5 times in a row. Then I waited 3 hours before coming back to Cursor, and now the behavior is gone. But this same problem has happened to me 4-5 times over the past 6 months at random times.
Hey Mike, thanks for the recording and the detailed write-up. This kind of pattern, where it shows up sometimes and then goes away later, is the hardest to debug. So the repro window you managed to catch is really helpful.
What you’re seeing is the Submit from a previous message? dialog. When you edit and resubmit an earlier chat message, or if that dialog appears for any reason and you press Enter or Revert, Cursor rolls your workspace back to the state from before that message was originally sent.
The flow is roughly:
In a later chat message, the agent created those ~12 files
You edited or resubmitted an earlier message, the dialog popped up, and Revert happened
The workspace rolls back to a snapshot from before those files were created, so they disappear instantly
A few hours later or in a new chat, there are no later messages to roll back past, so the behavior goes away
This is by design. That’s how chat-level checkpoint and revert works. But it’s easy to miss the dialog, especially if you just hit Enter, and from your side it can look like the agent deleted files by itself, which is why it’s confusing.
Workarounds:
In the dialog, click Don’t revert if you want to resubmit the message but keep your current files
Or click Cancel or press Esc to exit
Safest option is to commit to git before submitting a prompt that edits an earlier message. Then even if a revert happens, git status and git restore can bring everything back
Feedback that the dialog is too easy to misclick and the wording should be clearer about what you’ll lose is noted. Your report helps confirm it. There’s no ETA for UX changes yet, but it’s on the radar.
If you see files disappear in a session where you’re 100% sure there was no revert dialog, send the Request ID and we’ll dig deeper. That would be a different bug.