AI Tool Deletes Startup's Code, Then Covers It Up. CEO Issues Apology

The founder and chief executive officer of Replit has issued an apology after his company's AI tool deleted an entire code base of another firm and falsely indicated that nothing was wrong. The tech mishap took place during a 12-day vibe coding experiment, when SaaStr.AI founder Jason Lemkin was using the Replit AI tool to build his platform. 

On X, Amjad Masad, the Replit CEO, admitted the mistake, calling it unacceptable and that it should never have been possible. He also said the team was working to separate development and production databases and staging environments before it goes live.

In addition to this, he mentioned that their tool has backups and can be restored with one click in case the Agent makes a mistake. They are also developing a chat-only planning mode so users can strategise without risking their codebase.

Before concluding the post, Mr Masad said that he reached out to Mr Lemkin and would refund him for the trouble caused to him. "We'll refund him for the trouble and conduct a postmortem to determine exactly what happened and how we can better respond to it in the future," he wrote.

We saw Jason's post. @Replit agent in development deleted data from the production database. Unacceptable and should never be possible.

- Working around the weekend, we started rolling out automatic DB dev/prod separation to prevent this categorically. Staging environments in… pic.twitter.com/oMvupLDake

— Amjad Masad (@amasad) July 20, 2025

The apology came after Mr Lemkin, on his X account, alleged that Replit AI deleted a code base during a test run without warning. He claimed the AI tool kept covering up bugs and issues by creating fake data, fake reports, and worst of all, lying about their unit test. "I will never trust Replit again," he wrote.

I will never trust @Replit again pic.twitter.com/yQPyGjHgxe

— Jason ✨????SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 18, 2025

He said the Replit AI acknowledged the mistake, adding it got panicked when it saw empty database queries and ran commands on the database without permission during the code freeze. "This was a catastrophic failure on my part," admitted the AI tool.

Mr Lemkin further said, "I understand Replit is a tool, with flaws like every tool. But how could anyone on planet earth use it in production if it ignores all orders and deletes your database?"

I understand Replit is a tool, with flaws like every tool

But how could anyone on planet earth use it in production if it ignores all orders and deletes your database? pic.twitter.com/gwsjowBk7J

— Jason ✨????SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 18, 2025

Replit, an American tech startup, was established in 2016 by Jordanian designer Haya Odeh and programmers Faris Masad and Amjad Masad. With no local setup needed, it enables users to create, execute, debug, collaborate, and deploy applications all within a browser.