Anthropic accidentally caused thousands of GitHub repositories to be taken offline after seeking copyright removals for leaked source code from its Claude Code command line application.
The company discovered that the Claude Code source had been included in a recent release and widely shared on GitHub, where developers and AI enthusiasts posted copies and forks.
Anthropic issued a takedown notice under U.S. digital copyright law, asking GitHub to remove repositories containing the code. According to GitHub’s records, the notice was executed against about 8,100 repositories, including some legitimate forks of Anthropic’s public Claude Code repo.
Anthropic’s head of Claude Code, Boris Cherny, said the action was accidental and the company retracted most notices, limiting enforcement to one repository and 96 forks with the accidentally released source code. “The repo named in the notice was part of a fork network connected to our own public Claude Code repo, so the takedown reached more repositories than intended,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch.
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“We retracted the notice for everything except the one repo we named, and GitHub has restored access to the affected forks.” The company said in an announcement that it had withdrawn the bulk of the takedown requests.
The TechCrunch article noted the incident could harm Anthropic’s reputation as it reportedly plans an IPO, and suggested the episode may prompt scrutiny or legal challenges from shareholders.
The recap
- Anthropic sought takedowns of online repos containing Claude Code.
- GitHub records show notices removed about 8,100 repositories.
- Anthropic retracted most notices, preserving one repo and 96 forks.