Leaving the device unlocked makes it far more likely something will go wrong and data will be lost. Disabling or revoking permissions from core system components which are not user-facing apps or making low-level changes with ADB to unsupported settings, etc. are other examples of how people can screw things up entirely on their own. If people disable something like the OS permission manager component and the OS can't boot anymore without a factory reset, that's not a bug. This is likely the kind of issue which happened to you.
We recommend against using developer options on a production device, particularly making changes with ADB. We also recommend against disabling core system components or their permissions in the Settings app via the Show system menus. Android allows users to break the OS via developer options or disabling core system components. It may not happen until after a reboot or update. We don't think the Android Settings app should allow disabling as much as it does but we didn't design that and taking away options from people in the GUI would make a lot of people angry even if it can still be done via ADB.
Not locking the device is an extremely poor security and robustness decision. It's not considered a completed GrapheneOS installation without locking.
> but honestly it shouldn't have happened to me either
It depends on what you changed. Android doesn't block power users from breaking the OS and needing a factory reset. That's not GrapheneOS specific. We did eliminate a few common ways people locked themselves out of their device like disabling the built-in keyboard if they use a different one which can then break or might not support running Before First Unlock via Direct Boot support.