Anthropic scrambles to contain fallout from Claude Code source code leak

The leak quickly spread to all corners of the internet and will be hard to contain. (Picture: Anthropic)
Anthropic has sent 8,000 copyright takedown notices after their source code leaked on March 31, worrying that competitors or bad actors might try to reverse engineer their coding agent, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch write.

Some 2,000 files and 512,000 lines of code had been inadvertently put on a public server, then copied to Github and «forked» (copied) at least 50,000 times, according to Ars Technica.

The code itself outlines Claude Code’s memory architecture, instructions for the AI bot and an upcoming feature with an always-on background agent, The Verge reports.

Developer and writer Gabriel Anhaia hailed Anthropic’s craft, calling it «both inspiring and humbling,» amid a deluge of comments all over x.com.

The leak was not due to malicious actions, but a «human error,» Axios says, and no user data was exposed.

Read more: The WSJ, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, and The Verge.