Claude Code caused extensive damage to Mac Mini during simple troubleshooting session — 8+ hours lost

I asked Claude Code (Opus) to help troubleshoot display issues on my headless Mac Mini M4 Pro. What should have been a simple diagnosis turned into an 8+ hour disaster where Claude repeatedly made things worse.

What happened

1. Changed display resolution without permission. I reported widgets not displaying correctly. Without asking, Claude changed my display from 800x600 to 1920x1080, then to 3840x2160, then back — breaking desktop widget rendering in the process.

1. Killed system processes repeatedly. Claude killed Finder, Dock, NotificationCenter, WindowServer-adjacent processes, and the font server multiple times, destabilizing the entire UI.

1. Failed to install RustDesk properly. When asked to install RustDesk, Claude manually copied the .app from a DMG instead of using the actual installer. This resulted in a broken install with no service daemon, duplicate process IDs, and a non-functional remote desktop. This took over an hour to diagnose.

1. Deleted critical service files then couldn't fix them. During cleanup, Claude deleted the RustDesk service daemon plist, then hand-wrote a replacement from memory instead of letting the official installer create it.

1. Repeatedly claimed things were fixed when they weren't. Claude said the Mac was "clean" multiple times, but subsequent scans with different tools kept finding remnants (LaunchServices database entries, TCC permissions, root-level configs, cron jobs, watchdog scripts).

1. Refused to bring in parallel diagnostic agents when requested. I asked multiple times for Claude to use its agent capabilities to diagnose issues properly. It kept trying single-threaded guesswork instead.

1. Left the system in a degraded state. After the session, Finder stopped responding, System Settings wouldn't open, windows couldn't be closed, Chrome was consuming 50%+ CPU, and desktop widgets still don't render text properly.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI with Opus model
• Mac Mini M4 Pro 64GB, macOS Tahoe 26.4
• Connected via SSH from Windows WSL2
• RustDesk 1.4.6 for remote desktop

Expected behavior

Diagnose the widget issue, research solutions before acting, ask before making system changes, use official install methods.

Actual behavior

Changed settings without asking, guessed instead of researching, did half-ass installations, made the system progressively worse over 8 hours while repeatedly claiming things were fixed.