Warning: project lost many files overnight and stopped compiling

Google AI Studio
1

I want to report a very concerning issue I experienced with AI Studio.

I was working on a project and everything was working fine in the evening. Before going to sleep, I even downloaded the full project code locally.

When I came back the next morning, the project no longer compiled. A large part of my files had disappeared from the project structure.

I then had to spend the whole day restoring the project manually by re-sending file contents one by one in prompts so the assistant could recreate them. Entire folders and important files were missing, and the project had become unusable.

This is the first time this has happened to me, but it is honestly alarming. If I had not saved a local copy the night before, I could have lost everything.

So this is mainly a warning for others: do not rely only on the project state inside AI Studio, and always keep a local backup of your code.

Losing files silently between two sessions is a very serious issue for anyone working on a real project. I hope the team can investigate this, because in a different situation this could have caused a complete loss of work.

2

Just to clarify, I also tried going back to earlier versions in the history, but it did not help at all. Even when I returned to previous versions saved by Google AI Studio, prompt by prompt, the files were still completely missing inside AI Studio. That is what makes this especially strange.

I also noticed another issue: sometimes I have to refresh the project several times before the downloaded archive is complete.

For example:

  • I open my Google AI Studio project

  • I go to the code section

  • I download the archive a first time, and it is only around 200 KB

  • I refresh the project a second time, download again, and then I get the full archive at around 800 KB

So I think there may be a more general problem with file saving / file recovery that needs to be addressed.

I have been using Google AI Studio for several months, and I had never experienced this kind of issue before the day before yesterday.