Could snapshots via tmutil be used to protect against this kind of thing on MacOS?

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/creating-managi...

Probably, claude-file-recovery can also help you if you did not set it up, as sort of a last resort. But it's often a good idea to have your files backed up one way or another yes, I was just unaware that my backup hadn't run in a while.