Anthropic took down thousands of GitHub repos trying to yank its leaked source code — a move the company says was an accident
Anthropic accidentally caused thousands of code repositories on GitHub to be deleted while trying to get copies of the source code of the most popular product from the Internet.
On Tuesday, a software engineer discovered that Anthropic had, apparently by mistake, included access to the source code for the industry-leading Claude Code command-line application in a recent release. AI enthusiasts pored over the leaked code looking for clues as to how Anthropic is using the LLM underlying the application and sharing it on GitHub.
Anthropic has filed a takedown notice under US digital copyright law, asking GitHub to remove repositories containing the offending code. According to GitHub recordsthe notice was enforced against some 8,100 repositories – including legitimate forks of Anthropic’s own publicly released Claude Code repository, according to furious social media users whose code has been blocked.
Anthropic’s head of Claude Code, Boris Cherny, said the move was accidental and most of the takedown notices were rescinded, limiting it to one repository and 96 forks containing the accidentally released source code.
“The repository mentioned in the notice was part of a fork network connected to our own public Claude Code repository, so the takedown reached more repositories than intended,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We have rescinded the notice for all but the one repository we mentioned, and GitHub has restored access to the affected forks.”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 initial public offering, a task that typically requires attention to execution and compliance. Leaking your source code as a listed company? You better believe a shareholder lawsuit is coming.
