$20,000. 2 Weeks. 16 Claude Agents. Anthropic's First AI-Built C Compiler

Description

Anthropic unleashed 16 Claude agents to run non-stop for two weeks, and the results were nothing short of insane, they built a working C compiler from scratch in Rust that could compile the entire Linux kernel and even run DOOM. Researcher Nicholas Carlini pulled off this experiment using clever techniques like git-based task locking to stop agents from duplicating work, an external test harness with real-world test suites from SQLite and Redis, and fast-testing flags that kept agents running efficiently around the clock. But here's the controversial part, while the agents wrote all the code themselves without internet access, the compiler still relies heavily on GCC's assembler and linker, uses GCC to boot Linux, and performs significantly worse than traditional compilers even at maximum optimization, raising questions about whether this was truly autonomous development or a carefully orchestrated demonstration of AI's current capabilities. 🔗 Relevant Links Full article - https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler Claude's C Compiler repo - https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler ❤️ More about us Radically better observability stack: https://betterstack.com/ Written tutorials: https://betterstack.com/community/ Example projects: https://github.com/BetterStackHQ 📱 Socials Twitter: https://twitter.com/betterstackhq Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betterstackhq/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@betterstack LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betterstack 📌 Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:33 Setup, Findings and Outcome 2:23 Task lock-in 3:10 Findings 1: Build a Test Harness 4:40 Findings 2: Use Existing Technology 5:54 Findings 3: Give Your Agent Memory 6:20 Findings 4: Use Different Roles for Agents 6:55 Outcome, Did Anthropic Lie? 8:41 Problems with Claude's Compiler