I'm running an M3 MacBook Air with Sonoma 14.5 and encountered what appears to be a very worrisome bug. I'm doing some local development where I have a NodeJS Express back-end serving up an API for a React based front-end. I've been running both on my local machine. The backend relies on a file named '.env' which stores some environment variables such as database credentials and other sensitive information that is not checked-into nor synced to version control. Out of nowhere, I noticed that my code began to fail, and when I checked the disk I observed that the .env file was no longer present.

First to get some of the basic questions/details out of the way.

• I understand that the "." before the filename means that the file is a hidden file, but even with the Finder set to display hidden files, the file is no longer there.
• I'm 100% certain that I did not delete the file.
• None of my own code is possibly to blame for the deletion of the file.
• The path for the file is under my Users path (\<disk_volume_name>\users\<my_userid>\Development\sitename.com\backend\
• I don't use iCloud Drive to sync to user profile.
• I have ~700gb free of a 1tb on-device storage.

I've re-created this file and things work again, but I'm 100% certain that the file disappeared without being deleted by my own actions.

Is something others have encountered with Sonoma 14.5 on a MacBook Air?