Lost all content - what the hell happened?

System Information
  • Strapi Version: 4.5.6
  • Operating System: MacOS 11.6
  • Database: PostgreSQL 15
  • Node Version: 16.13.1
  • NPM Version: 8.1.2
  • Yarn Version:

I needed to add author details to a news items content type I had created, so I edited the model as outlined here: Backend customization - Strapi Developer Documentation

I then merged the feature branch I was on into the dev branch and then checkout the dev branch.

I then got 403 errors from the Strapi API in my NextJS project. It turns out that all the content I had entered into Strapi has completely disappeared. What has caused this? This behaviour is obviously a big red flag for the project - can’t afford for this to happen once the project is live.