AI startup Anthropic accidentally deleted thousands of repositories on GitHub while attempting to remove leaked source code for Claude Code, according to TechCrunch.
The company confirmed the leak of part of its developer tool's code on March 31.
“No confidential customer data was disclosed. An error occurred during the release packaging process. This was due to human error, not a hack. We are implementing measures to prevent this from happening again,” said a company representative.
This incident could weaken Anthropic's position, as competitors and third-party developers gained full access to the architecture of a popular product.
The startup sent a request to GitHub to remove the repositories under U.S. copyright law. Approximately 8,100 archives were affected, including forks of the official Claude Code repository. This sparked a wave of discontent among the impacted users.
Boris Cherny, head of the Claude Code project, acknowledged the mistake. As a result, the company rescinded most of its removal requests.
“The repositories listed in the notice were part of a network of forks related to our public Claude Code database. The deletion affected more projects than intended. We have rescinded notices for all but one repository, and GitHub has restored access to the affected forks,” said an Anthropic representative.
Project Based on Claude Code
In light of the incident, enthusiasts have launched an open project called OpenClaude, based on the leaked code from Anthropic.
The fork includes support for Anthropic's API and models compatible with the OpenAI interface. Users can connect solutions from Google (via OpenRouter), Mistral, OpenAI, or free local models, including through Ollama.
OpenClaude retains the original tools: web search, file reading and editing, screenshot analysis, session memory, and more.
Additionally, a router has been added for automatic neural network selection based on task complexity.
The deep reasoning mode presented in Claude Code does not function in OpenClaude.
Recall that in March, Anthropic transformed Claude into an AI agent — the bot gained the ability to use a computer to perform tasks.