claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [BUG] False positive usage policy violation on computational biology research content [1 comments, 2 participants]

Bug Description Getting "API Error: Claude Code is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy" on legitimate computational biology research content. Document is a task specification based on peer-reviewed Lancet publication about Oropouche virus outbreak surveillance (M. Paredes Olortegui et al., Lancet Regional Health Americas 2026).

TL;DR

The issue can likely be resolved by refining the Claude Code's Usage Policy to better accommodate legitimate epidemiological research contexts, potentially through classifier tuning.

Guidance

• Review the Usage Policy to identify specific triggers causing the "API Error" and assess if they can be adjusted to allow legitimate academic content.
• Consider providing additional context or metadata to the API to help distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate uses of terms like "outbreak" and "viral".
• Evaluate the classifier's performance on a dataset of peer-reviewed epidemiological research to improve its accuracy in identifying legitimate content.
• If possible, test the same content with a different classifier or model to determine if the issue is specific to the Opus model.
• Collaborate with the Claude Code development team to report the issue and provide feedback on the needed adjustments to the Usage Policy and classifier.

Example

No specific code snippet can be provided without more information on the API or the classifier used. However, the process might involve adjusting parameters or providing additional training data to the classifier.

Notes

The solution may require cooperation with the developers of Claude Code to adjust their Usage Policy and improve the classifier's performance on epidemiological research content. The effectiveness of the solution may depend on the specifics of the policy and the classifier's design.

Recommendation

Apply workaround: Refine the Usage Policy and classifier through collaboration with the Claude Code development team, as this approach directly addresses the root cause of the issue and has the potential to provide a long-term solution.