[BUG] False-positive Usage Policy refusal mid-stream on a markdown comparison table

What happened

Claude Code aborted mid-stream with:

API Error: Claude Code is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy

The cut hit while Claude was emitting a markdown comparison table describing how three docs in a website-builder project are organized (a routing description for CLAUDE.md, frontend-design.md, website-marketing.md). The user request was non-sensitive — "describe current file topology and propose alternatives".

Request ID

req_011CbJm3BzH1cZ9754o4Zw1S

Repro / context

• ~30s into a streaming response that had started rendering a 3-row markdown table.
• Refusal landed on what would have been a row about workflow steps.
• No restricted topics, no jailbreak attempts.

Why this looks like a false positive

The visible content before the refusal was metadata about file organization. There is nothing in the conversation that should trigger Usage Policy enforcement.

Expected behaviour

If a classifier is going to trigger, it should fire before any tokens are streamed — not mid-stream after the user has already seen ~50% of the response. Mid-stream refusal on benign content makes Claude Code feel unreliable.

Workaround

Retry. Sometimes the same prompt succeeds on a second attempt.

Related

• #7559 (closed autoclosed without investigation)

Environment

• Claude Code: 2.1.149
• Model: claude-opus-4-7
• OS: macOS Darwin 25.5.0