Claude code modified my .bashrc without asking?

Note

This is not the classical post about running claude in YOLO mode and then complaining that it damaged the system. I have reasons to think that claude automatically modified my .bashrc to remove a line alias claude=... without asking my permission and without notifying me of the change.

I'm not a huge fan of AI-assisted coding, but I occasionally use claude code.

Today I started claude for the first time after weeks, and it notified me about automatically updating to the latest version (which I believe is 1.0.43). I didn't pay particular attention to the update, and then I did a productive session of vibe coding which resulted into a nice SPy PR.

Later today I returned to my computer and noticed that my ~/.bashrc (which I keep in a git repo) had been modified. This is the diff:

diff --git a/dotfiles/bashrc b/dotfiles/bashrc
index 6e9fd68..6a1fb30 100644
--- a/dotfiles/bashrc
+++ b/dotfiles/bashrc
@@ -107,7 +107,6 @@ alias dmesg="dmesg --human"
 alias ddmesg="/bin/dmesg"

 alias xs='xdg-open'
-alias claude='claude-logging'

 #alias hg="/usr/bin/python -s -E `which hg`" # else hg it's awfully slow to start
 alias mcd='mount /mnt/cdrom'

So, apparently "someone" decided that I should alias claude to something else. And I am 100% sure that I didn't do that change.

What is claude-logging?

claude-logging is a little tool which I wrote some months ago, when claude didn't have a builtin logging mechanism yet. It uses script to record all the characters which have been sent to the terminal. Nowadays there are probably better tools to achieve the same goal, but that's not the point of course.

Investigating

At first, I checked the modification time of ~/.bashrc:

❯ ls -l ~/.bashrc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 antocuni antocuni 34 apr 28  2021 /home/antocuni/.bashrc -> /home/antocuni/env/dotfiles/bashrc

❯ ls -l /home/antocuni/env/dotfiles/bashrc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 antocuni antocuni 8728 lug  7 17:59 /home/antocuni/env/dotfiles/bashrc

So, it was modified today at 17:59, which is exactly the time at which I started claude. Suspicious.

Then, I tried to seach for the string .bashrc inside the claude minified JS binary:

❯ cd /home/antocuni/.nvm/versions/node/v23.8.0/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/


❯ npx prettier cli.js | grep -n -C 10 bashrc
303354-    }
303355-  }
303356-  return A;
303357-}
303358-var t2Q = 1800000,
303359-  Cu1 = "\\";
303360-function yU0(A) {
303361-  let B = A.includes("zsh")
303362-    ? ".zshrc"
303363-    : A.includes("bash")
303364:      ? ".bashrc"
303365-      : ".profile";
303366-  return o2Q(i2Q(), B);
303367-}
303368-function e2Q(A, B) {
303369-  let Q = yU0(A),
303370-    D = Q.endsWith(".zshrc"),
303371-    I = "";
303372-  if (D)
303373-    I = `
303374-      echo "# Functions" >> $SNAPSHOT_FILE
--
339189-import { join as Gp } from "path";
339190-import { join as p01 } from "path";
339191-import { execFile as d_6 } from "child_process";
339192-import { homedir as Qw1 } from "os";
339193-import { join as N9A } from "path";
339194-var sf2 = /^\s*alias\s+claude=/;
339195-function Rk() {
339196-  let A = process.env.ZDOTDIR || Qw1();
339197-  return {
339198-    zsh: N9A(A, ".zshrc"),
339199:    bash: N9A(Qw1(), ".bashrc"),
339200-    fish: N9A(Qw1(), ".config/fish/config.fish"),
339201-  };
339202-}
339203-function ec(A) {
339204-  let B = !1;
339205-  return {
339206-    filtered: A.filter((D) => {
339207-      if (sf2.test(D)) return ((B = !0), !1);
339208-      return !0;
339209-    }),

I surely don't want to try to reverse engineer this code, but again it seems very suspicious. Note in particular line 339194, which contains a regex to find strings like alias claude=.

The final thing which I did was to revert my .bashrc to its original state, and try to run claude again. This time, it didn't modify the file. Maybe the logic is triggered only when there is an update?

Update Jul 8 2025, 09:57

I ran claude again and it updated to version 1.0.44. My alias in .bashrc is gone again, so it seems likely that it's triggered at every update.

Conclusion

I don't know for sure whether claude modified my .bashrc during the update, but I think that my investigation above shows that it's a very reasonable hypothesis.

Personally, I find this completely unacceptable: it would be fine if claude detected the alias and suggested an auto-fix, but modifying it automatically without telling me crosses a line.

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