A ChatGPT Work task changed files while I was away

The awkward part of an unattended run is exactly that you did not see it happen. There is no chat window open, no cursor to watch, no moment where you can say “wait, don’t touch that one.” You come back and the folder is different. The fastest way out of that feeling is a file history that recorded the run for you, so you can reconstruct what changed at your own pace.

Find the right time window

Start by narrowing the timeline. You don’t need the exact minute the task fired - a rough window is enough. “Overnight,” “while I was in a meeting,” “sometime after lunch” will get you close.

1. Open CoworkRestore from the menu bar. Click the icon at the top of your Mac screen and pick the folder the scheduled or background task was pointed at.
2. Sort the save-point history by time. The most recent versions sit at the top. Scroll down to the window the task ran in.
3. Look for a cluster of save points. An automated run usually leaves several versions close together as the folder settled - a tight band of activity at a time you weren’t working is almost always the task.
4. Use search if the history is long. The search box matches file paths, so typing part of a filename or subfolder the task touched trims the list quickly.

If you know roughly what the task was asked to do - rename a batch of files, rewrite a report, tidy a folder - that helps you recognise the right band of save points even faster.

Review ALL the changes before you restore anything

This is the step to slow down on. Open the save point from just after the task ran. CoworkRestore shows the full list of files that were added, modified, or deleted compared with the version just before it - the complete record of what the run did to the folder, not a summary of it.

Read the whole list before you touch anything. An unattended task can do more than you expected, and the file it got wrong is often not the one you would have guessed. A ChatGPT Work chat transcript can describe what the task intended to do; the changed-files list is what actually landed on disk.

If you only want to look right now and not restore anything yet, how to see exactly what ChatGPT Work changed in a folder walks the read-first workflow in more detail.

Identify new, modified, moved, and deleted files

Not every change is the same kind of change, and it helps to sort them as you read:

• New files show as additions. A reorganizing task often creates folders or copies; decide whether you actually want each one.
• Modified files can be opened to see them before and after the task touched them, side by side. Read the change and decide if you want to keep it.
• Moved or renamed files usually show up as one file removed and a near-identical one added. If a cleanup shuffled things around, this is where you see where each item landed.
• Deleted files are still there inside the earlier save point. CoworkRestore can put them back without you fishing around in the Trash.

Keep the good outputs

The goal is rarely to erase the whole run. Automated tasks often get most of the job right and one or two things wrong. So separate the keepers from the mistakes before you restore anything.

For the files the task got right, do nothing - they already live in the folder exactly as you want them. CoworkRestore never overwrites the current state on its own; it only changes a file when you explicitly restore it. Leaving a file alone is how you keep it.

Reverse only the bad ones

Once you’ve read the changes, you have two ways to recover:

• Per-file restore. Tick just the files the task got wrong and leave the rest alone. The good outputs stay, the mistakes revert to how they were before the run. This is the right tool when the task mostly worked.
• Whole-folder restore. Roll the entire folder back to the save point from just before the task started. Use this when the run was wrong end-to-end and you’d rather start over than cherry-pick.

Every restore takes a safety snapshot first. That means Undo last restore is one click away until the next save point lands - so if you restore and immediately realise you wanted the other choice, you can put things back. The full review-and-restore walkthrough lives in how to undo file changes made by ChatGPT Work.

Reduce the folder scope for future automated tasks

Whatever happened this time, the next scheduled or background run can be made boring on purpose. The single biggest lever is scope.

• Point the task at a dedicated working folder, not your whole Desktop or your entire Documents tree. The smaller the surface area, the smaller the mess if something goes sideways - and the shorter the changed-files list you have to review afterwards.
• Make sure the files are actually local. If the folder lives in iCloud Drive, check that the files have been downloaded to the Mac before the task runs. iCloud’s “Optimize Mac Storage” can leave files as stubs that aren’t really there - a recipe for a confused run on data that isn’t present.
• Add the folder to CoworkRestore before you schedule the task. CoworkRestore watches the folder and saves versions as changes settle, so any unattended run is already reviewable when you come back. It can only recover what it was watching for - so turning it on first is the whole game.
• Don’t pause snapshots for that folder. If you pause before a scheduled run, there’s nothing to recover from. Leave it on; it’s designed to sit quietly in the background.

There’s a fuller pre-flight walkthrough in how to safely use ChatGPT Work with local folders on your Mac, and a plain overview of how the two fit together on the CoworkRestore for ChatGPT Work page.

Why unattended tasks need independent file history

When you’re watching an AI work, you are the safety net - you can stop it, correct it, or catch a bad move in the moment. A scheduled or background task removes exactly that. The one situation where you most need a record of what changed is the one where you can’t watch it happen.

That’s the case for a file history that lives outside the AI tool. ChatGPT Work runs the task; CoworkRestore, watching the folder on your Mac, independently records what actually changed on disk. Because there is no ChatGPT extension or account connection involved - it simply watches the local folder - the record it keeps doesn’t depend on the task reporting itself honestly. The changes are on disk either way, and CoworkRestore saw them either way.

So the habit worth keeping is small: after any unattended run, open CoworkRestore, find the save points from the window it ran in, and skim the changed-files list. Thirty seconds turns “I have no idea what happened while I was away” into “I looked, here’s what changed, here’s what I kept.” Every captured change is reviewable. Every captured change is reversible. That’s the promise that matters when you’re not in the chair.