I got DMCA'd by Anthropic (not a joke)

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Summary based on the YouTube transcript and episode description.

Theo (t3.gg) received a DMCA strike from Anthropic on a fork containing only a one-word code change, then watched Anthropic retract it after 8,100 repos were accidentally swept up.

  • Anthropic’s DMCA targeted 8,100 GitHub repos — the entire fork network of the official Claude Code repo, not just forks of the leaked source.
  • Theo’s struck repo contained only a one-word change to a skill file; no leaked source code was present.
  • Anthropic retracted the DMCA quickly, keeping strikes only on the actual leaked-source mirror and its ~96 forks.
  • The Claude Code source leak was caused by a manual npm deployment step that accidentally included local source maps — Anthropic has since automated the process.
  • A Rust rewrite of Claude Code using the leaked source hit 100k GitHub stars in under a day, reportedly the fastest-growing repo ever, and Anthropic did not DMCA it.
  • Anthropic Boris confirmed the leak was a process/infrastructure failure, not individual blame — and credited blameless culture while still fixing the root cause.
  • Theo argues open-sourcing Claude Code would have prevented the entire crisis and that Anthropic now holds the record for most GitHub repos taken down by any single company.

2026-04-02 · Watch on YouTube