Anthropic accidentally deleted thousands of code repositories on GitHub while trying to remove copies of its most popular product’s source code from the internet.
On Tuesday, a software engineer at Anthropic accidentally, includes access to source code for the category-leading Claude Code command-line application in its latest release. Sharing it on GitHub, AI enthusiasts pored over the leaked code for clues about how Anthropic uses LLM, which is the core of the app.
Anthropic issued a notice under US digital copyright law requiring GitHub to take down repositories containing the offending code. According to GitHub notesThe notice was executed against approximately 8,100 repositories, including legal forks of Anthropic’s publicly released Claude Code repository, get angry social media users whose code is blocked.
Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, he said the move was random and retracted most of the takedown notices, limiting it to 96 forks with one repository and accidentally released source code.
“The repo mentioned in the notification was part of a fork network connected to our public Claude Code repo, so the removal reached more repositories than intended,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve retracted the notification for all but one repo we named, and GitHub has restored access to the affected forks.”
The botched cleanup here is another black eye for the company as it reportedly plans an IPO, which typically requires attention to execution and compliance. Leaking your source code as a public company? You better believe there is a shareholders’ court.
