anthropics
[Bug] Anthropic API Error: Overly broad safety filter blocks legitimate bioinformatics metadata requests
Bug Description Safety filters are WAY over the top. I am the developer of Claude Skills to assist https://VEuPathDB.org data curators/processors handle new genomes for loading into our bioinformatics resources (https://github.com/VEuPathDB/dataset-curator). The error message appears after the agent has received the JSON metadata about the genome assembly (step 1):
> Hi there. Let's curate a genome assembly.
[Claude responds by loading the skill, checking local directories are present and correct and asks which genome to process]
> Let's do GCA_021019225.1 for FungiDB
[Claude performs the curl sucessfully]
● Excellent! I've successfully fetched the assembly metadata. Here's what I found:
Assembly Information:
- Organism: Calonectria ilicicola
⎿ API Error: Claude Code is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy
(https://www.anthropic.com/legal/aup). Please double press esc to edit your last message or start a new session for
Claude Code to assist with a different task. If you are seeing this refusal repeatedly, try running /model
claude-sonnet-4-20250514 to switch models.
This seems to be triggered by any plant pathogen fungal species. We have tried using the following preamble suggested by ChatGPT (regular Claude web chat also refuses to have any discussion about it):
Please note, this organism is a plant-only fungal pathogen, not infectious to humans or animals. The task is descriptive genome annotation cleanup, not experimental design, modification, or interpretation of virulence.
But this does not help.
My colleagues are having to use Claude Sonnet 4 to do any work with this.
Environment Info
- Platform: linux
- Terminal: gnome-terminal
- Version: 2.0.57
- Feedback ID: 75e1bd4d-57b6-4ddd-9025-504f255777dd
Errors
[{"error":"AxiosError: Request failed with status code 401\n at kj (file:///home/username/.volta/tools/image/packages/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.js:24:1137)\n at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (file:///home/username/.volta/tools/image/packages/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.js:29:9858)\n at IncomingMessage.emit (node:events:520:35)\n at IncomingMessage.emit (node:domain:489:12)\n at endReadableNT (node:internal/streams/readable:1701:12)\n at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:90:21)\n at SVA.request (file:///home/username/.volta/tools/image/packages/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.js:31:2130)\n at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:105:5)\n at async _S2 (file:///home/username/.volta/tools/image/packages/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.js:2147:5280)","timestamp":"2025-12-20T10:08:16.498Z"}]
