Gemini CLI user reports files lost during project reorganization

A July report of missing project files

On July 21, 2025, Anuraag Gupta filed Gemini CLI issue #4586, reporting that files appeared to be lost after he asked Gemini CLI to reorganize a project folder on Windows. His report describes a sequence of file-move operations while using version 0.1.13 and includes a terminal transcript.

Gupta later proposed that a failed directory-creation step may have caused destructive overwrites. That was his hypothesis, not a confirmed Google root-cause finding. The primary issue establishes a user-reported loss associated with a reorganization task; it does not establish that Gemini CLI intentionally deleted files or that they were irrecoverable. A separate August 1 issue described another file-loss report and should not be treated as the same event.

Make file operations reversible

Project reorganization can affect many paths at once, so a mistaken move may be difficult to spot until later. The safest workflow is to preserve a recoverable copy and inspect the plan before an agent changes files.

• Commit or copy the project before asking an agent to move files in bulk
• Ask for a proposed source-to-destination list, then check that each path exists
• Run the operation on a duplicate folder or version-controlled branch first