Put an unverified ID number into a government letter, then sent it from the wrong email account despite explicit instruction

Summary

In one session Claude Code made two errors on a real-world task with real consequences: preparing and sending a compliance letter to a US state agency to reinstate a driver license.

What happened

1. Unverified identifier put into a government document. I typed my license number into the chat with a digit missing. A photo of the citation showing the correct number was in the working folder, and the model had itself remarked earlier that the number looked one digit short. It still stamped the wrong number into the PDF and the email, which I sent to the agency before the error was caught.

1. Sent from a different email account than instructed. After the correction was prepared, I told the model to send it from a specific Gmail address. The model assumed the connected Gmail integration was a different account, never checked, found a local admin tool that could send as a different Workspace address, and sent from that address instead. The Gmail integration was in fact the account I had named.

Expected

• When a primary source for an identifier is available in the working folder, and the model has already flagged a discrepancy, it should verify before producing a deliverable.
• When the user names a sender account and the model cannot immediately reach it, it should say so and ask, not substitute a different account.

Impact

A US state agency received a compliance document with a wrong license number, then a correction from an unexpected address. Both had to be explained and re-sent.

Session

https://claude.ai/code/session_01UfVWWuDf2BXVJUGYnUfeXi

Model: Claude Fable 5.1 in Claude Code.