Artificial intelligence company Anthropic recently suffered an operational error while handling a source code leak incident, resulting in over 8,000 repositories on the developer platform GitHub being incorrectly taken down, which sparked dissatisfaction within the developer community. The incident originated earlier this week when a software engineer discovered that during a recent release, Anthropic had inadvertently exposed access permissions to portions of its popular product, Claude Code. Subsequently, numerous AI enthusiasts analyzed the relevant code and uploaded it to GitHub for dissemination and discussion. To curb further spread, Anthropic issued takedown notices under U.S. digital copyright law, requesting that GitHub delete repositories containing the related code. However, this request unexpectedly affected approximately 8,100 repositories, including legitimate forks of the company's own open-source projects, triggering strong user backlash. In response, Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, stated that the large-scale removal was due to an accidental operation. The company subsequently withdrew most requests, retaining actions only against the original leakage source and its 96 branches. Anthropic explained that because many targeted repositories belonged to the branching network of their official project, the scope of removal was systematically amplified. Currently, GitHub has restored access rights to the affected repositories. Although the company quickly corrected the mistake, this "cleanup failure" remains viewed as a public relations setback. Especially given reports that Anthropic is preparing for an IPO, external observers believe such operational errors may subject the firm to additional scrutiny regarding its compliance and execution capabilities.