Anthropic downloaded thousands of GitHub repos trying to install its downloaded source code – which the company says was an accident.

Anthropic accidentally caused thousands of repositories on GitHub to be deleted while trying to pull its most popular code from the web.

On Tuesday, a developer discovered that Anthropic, by accident, including access to the source code on the leading Claude Code line application in the latest release. AI enthusiasts analyzed the leaked code to find out how Anthropic is used for the LLM underlying the program, and shared it on GitHub.

Anthropic issued a takedown notice under US copyright laws asking GitHub to remove the repository containing the offending code. According to GitHub’s documentsthe information was issued against 8,100 repositories – including the official Anthropic forks that were released publicly on the Claude Code site, according to to be angry social media users whose codes have been blocked.

Claude Code’s Anthropic Director, Boris Cherny, he said the move was accidental and returned a large number of removal notices, placing them in a single repository with 96 forks containing the accidentally released code.

“The repo mentioned in the notice was part of a network fork connected to our team’s Claude Code repo, so the removal reached more repositories than intended,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We returned information on everything except the repo we mentioned, and GitHub has restored access to the affected forks.”

Such a purge is another black eye for the company as it is said to be preparing for an IPO, a task that often requires attention to execution and compliance. Publishing your source code as a public company? You must believe that there is a liability on the part of the shareholders.