Anthropic just released a marketing

video proving that Claude, their

flagship programming model, can produce

a C compiler from scratch, no human

intervention, and they can do it in

parallel. And it can compile Linux,

SQLite, Reddus, Lua,

and even Doom. Hey, what's with the

frame rate? This is going to be a weird

video because I'm going to say something

positive about Anthropic. And then I'm

also gonna call Anthropics one of the

most deceitful companies I have ever

seen. This little product demo that they

did, the language inside the video, it

is the most dishonest framing of what

they actually did versus what they're

saying they did. Anthropic and its

non-stop hyping of the AI models is

perhaps one of the most annoying

features of 2025 and it's coming into

2026 with a whole new level of rigor and

completeness. All right, so let's go

over what they did, what the actual cool

part, and actually why what they did was

complete hype nonsense. So don't worry,

it's not over. You don't have to pack it

up. Software engineering is in fact not

over quite yet. Now, that video that you

just got done seeing, there's so many

lies into it. So, we're going to just

try we're going to try our best to kind

of take apart the lie. So, first off,

the thing that they were actually

building was trying to see, can they get

Claude to run by itself long enough to

produce a functional piece of software.

Functional, of course, just means that

it can do what it says it does,

regardless of how good it does it. Long

as at the end of the day, you say do X,

it does X. you compile Linux, it should

produce Linux as an artifact. Also, put

a little star on that because that even

that not so true. All right, the article

kind of kicks off with to test it. Now,

it being this multi- aent harness to be

able to have Claude run autonomously for

multiple weeks. I task 16 agents with

writing a Rustbased C compiler from

scratch capable of compiling the Linux

kernel. Over nearly 2,000 cloud code

sessions and $20,000 worth of API cost.

The agent produced a 100,000 line

compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86

ARM and risk 5. Again, there's no

asterisk. So, what are these so-called

asterisks? Well, first off, I don't know

if you know this, but GCC, which is what

they're basing this off of, not only is

it open source, which means that they've

already trained on top of it. And we all

know if in case you didn't know that uh

these models, you can produce nearly

perfect identical copyright works back

out of them if you can convince them to

produce it. Like this one right here

showing that Claude 37 can produce 95.8%

of the first book of Harry Potter.

Almost a near verbatim reproduction. But

Anthropic in its in its wisdom when

starting from scratch, scratch meant 37

years of developed torture test suite

from GCC. Yes, you know this classic way

of doing software development. Usually

when I start a new project, I first get

handed 37 years of prior art in which

contains the perfect golden test suite

so that I can test my new project in

every conceivable way possible. And then

on top of it, I have the actual working

version of the thing I'm about to build

that I can also test my working version

against. And that's known as the online

Oracle. As we as we say in this software

biz. Also, when I say it can compile

Linux from scratch, I want you to

understand that it lacks a 16bit x86

compiler necessary to boot Linux out of

the real mode. That's because Opus was

unable to implement a 16-bit x86 code

generated needed to boot into 16-bit

real mode. While the compiler can output

the correct 16-bit x86 via the 66 and 67

op code prefixes, the resulting compiled

output is over 60KB, far exceeding the

32K code limit enforced by Linux. See,

it's honestly it's Linux's fault. Like,

they have this stupid 32bit maximum

number on. It's not my fault. I'm not

holding it wrong. It's Lionus. He's

holding it wrong. All right. So to say

that all in a quick sentence, they

started a project from scratch having

every single conceivable test and a way

to test it under all conditions. They

had an online version of it, GCC online,

to be able to call out to to validate

everything they've done. And lastly,

they couldn't actually make Linux boot

because they were unable to produce an

artifact small enough. So they built a

compiler completely from scratch in two

weeks and they just had to walk away.

Okay. They also couldn't walk away

during those two weeks because sometimes

it did things and it would crash itself

and we had to restart it and make sure

things were working. Now, that's what I

call from scratch. And this is exactly

what I mean by dishonesty. Like look at

that. You saw the video in the

beginning. It's like yeah dude we said

hey Claude you'll build this from

scratch. Walked away two weeks later.

Linux was working. SQL light was

working. Reddus was working. And yeah,

we even played Doom, loser. This is not

from scratch. There's no from scratch,

no human intervention that don't just

just say what you did. Like, okay, so

the real takeaway, which everybody

should have, which is what is triggering

me and making me so angry again at

Anthropic, is that the real cool thing

is that they figured out how to get 16

agents to mostly run by themselves for

two weeks straight and actually produce

something given the correct guidelines

at the end of the day. Hey, that's

pretty cool. It's a pretty large

project. It shows that models are in

fact improving and can handle kind of

context up to this size and able to kind

of work together given the right

orchestration. Like that's a neat

takeaway, but that's not what they said.

And that of course is driving me nuts.

Which of course led to hilarious issues

on GitHub. Like the very first issue,

hello world does not compile cuz it

turns out the example program that they

put in their readme does not compile.

Sorry, that doesn't compile. You didn't

provide the linker, bro. You idiot.

Okay, CCC is not like GCC. It only is

the compiler. It's not an assembler or

linker. Okay, you think you just get

those for free, buddy? Which, by the

way, there's like 300 and some comments

on here of just people arguing back and

forth. Oh my gosh, it is just a actual

It's a claw slot mess in there. Okay,

and of course, I'm not the only person

saying this. There are some other people

saying, "Hey, this is kind of

ridiculous. This is a little out of like

out of pocket here calling this from

scratch and no human intervention. So,

at the end of the day, this could have

been an article about how we got Claude

to run for multiple weeks and produce

something with very little to almost

none uh human interaction and being able

to fulfill a spec. But instead, it

became a spectacle about how Anthropic

yet again is completely dishonest. This

is just another example of the AI hype

cycle. They're just here to try to raise

money and to take every piece of novel

work possible and sell it back to you.

Now, this is a future I'm personally

excited about. Am I right? Let's go. Oh

my gosh. The name is anthropic. If you

were just like a little bit more honest

about what you're doing, honestly, I

think a lot of people would be much more

excited about it and probably cheer you

on from the sideline. I think you have a

lot of potential. Your models are pretty

good. There's a lot of cool stuff about

AI. We don't have to be AI haters, but

sometimes you just say the stupidest

crap ever and just do the stupidest

stuff and make everybody hate you. How

about you just don't do that anymore?

Hey, you know what? I will give you my

service for free the next time you

decide to release another marketing

video. Just let me watch it and read

your article right I'll do it for free

for you. Okay, Daario. Okay. And maybe

we could frame this with a crazy radical

idea. Honesty. I know. It's a whole new

novel concept. A gen. Hey, is that HTTP?

Get that out of here. That's not how we

order coffee. We order coffee via SSH

terminal.shop. Yeah. You want a real

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>> Well, maybe the coffee is not for you.

Terminal [singing]

coffee [music]

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Living the dream.