Anthropic accidentally triggered the removal of thousands of GitHub repositories while trying to scrub leaked source code for its Claude Code tool.

 

The leak was first spotted by a software engineer, after which AI enthusiasts shared the code widely on GitHub. In response, Anthropic issued a copyright takedown request—but it ended up affecting around 8,100 repositories, including legitimate forks of its own public code.

 

The company later said the mass takedown was unintentional. It rolled back most of the removals, leaving only one repository and a small number of related forks affected, while GitHub restored access to the rest.