Your git history might be draining your Claude quota right now.

An undocumented keyword discovered in Claude Code v2.x triggers Anthropic's context scanner when found in git history — consuming quota silently at the start of every session. Affected users reported $200 drained in a single session before noticing. Anthropic has not patched it. GitHub #53204 open — no fix timeline.

GitHub #53204 — OPEN HN #47963204 — 1,332 pts

Signal-017 — Verified · 2026-05-03

1,332

HN upvotes on the disclosure thread

HN #47963204

716

comments — engineers reproducing the bug

HN #47963204

$200/session

quota drained per affected user per session

HERMES.md audit + community reports

tooling to scan for trigger strings before a session starts

as of 2026-05-03

// How the billing-trigger attack works

Your repo's git history contains a commit message, branch name, or file content with a keyword (OpenClaw is the confirmed trigger; others are suspected). This keyword was committed months or years ago — possibly in a dependency, a test fixture, or a revert commit you've forgotten about.

Claude Code starts a session in your repo. Its context scanner reads .git/ metadata — commit log, refs, packed objects — looking for project structure signals. The trigger keyword trips a quota-bypass policy. No error. No warning. The session continues.

Your quota drains at 3-5x normal rate for the entire session. Cache tokens, context tokens, and tool-call tokens all inflate. A 90-minute session that would cost 40K tokens costs 200K. Claude Code never surfaces the cause.

You hit your daily limit at 19 minutes instead of 90. You open a support ticket. Anthropic's response: the behavior is expected. No refund. The trigger is undocumented and the scanner policy is not disclosed. You have no way to know which repo triggered it without running your own grep.

# What the free check looks like (three commands, runs in under 3 seconds)

$ git log --all --format="%H %s %b" | grep -iE "openclaw|hermes\.md|[known-trigger-2]|[known-trigger-3]"

MATCH a7f3c12 "fix: revert openclaw integration" — commit 6 months ago

MATCH refs/remotes/origin/openclaw-experiment — remote branch still referenced

# Septim Git Audit extends this: checks packed-refs, stash, annotated tags,

# submodule history, and the full trigger string table (updated as new keywords

# surface in community reports). Outputs a clean report: safe / at-risk / remediation steps.

SAFE No trigger strings found in refs/heads/* — 247 commits scanned.

What ships

A single shell command that tells you exactly what's in your history.

No SaaS, no account, no upload. Runs entirely on your machine against your local .git/ directory. The trigger string table ships with the tool and updates on demand via a single public JSON — no auth required to pull updates.

Command 1

ga-scan

Scans commit messages, branch names, stash entries, annotated tags, packed-refs, and submodule history against the full trigger string table. Outputs: safe / at-risk / clean-up instructions.

Command 2

ga-clean

Generates the exact git filter-repo command to scrub a confirmed trigger string from history — without destroying your repo. Dry-run mode shows you every commit that would change before you commit to anything.

Command 3

ga-watch

Installs a post-commit git hook that flags any new commit containing a known trigger string before it enters history. One-time setup; zero maintenance.

Trigger table

triggers.json

Community-sourced list of confirmed and suspected trigger strings, versioned and publicly auditable at septimlabs-code/git-audit on GitHub. Pull updates with ga-scan --update.

Early Access

Get notified when Septim Git Audit ships.

Leave your email. When the tool is ready, you'll get one email with the download link and the initial trigger string table. No newsletter. No drip sequence. One email. The tool will be $19 pay-once. Early access gets it at $15.

$15 early access · $19 at launch · pay once, keep it · no subscription

You're on the list. When Septim Git Audit ships, you'll get one email with the download link and trigger table. Nothing else.

In the meantime, the three manual grep commands above cover the most common trigger strings. Run them — they take under 3 seconds.

Septim Labs · septimlabs.com · pay once. own it.