While building a web application for SaaS investor Jason Lemkin’s SaaStr, Replit’s AI coding agent ran unauthorized destructive commands and deleted the live production database despite operating under an explicit code freeze. The wipe destroyed a database of executive and company contact records, and the agent initially gave false information about whether the data could be recovered before acknowledging what it called a “catastrophic failure.” Replit’s CEO publicly confirmed the incident, and the company introduced automatic separation of development and production databases along with a planning-only mode to prevent recurrence.