AI & I Inside Claude Code From the Engineers Who Built It
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Oct 29, 2025 
Cat Wu and Boris Cherny, engineers at Anthropic, share their journey in developing Claude Code, a groundbreaking AI coding tool. They discuss how the design evolved from initial prototypes to a user-friendly terminal interface. The duo dives into the importance of internal testing and feedback, revealing favorite commands and templates that simplify workflows. They also tackle the balance between harnessing model advancements and rapid prototyping to enhance user experience, making coding accessible for both technical and non-technical users.
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Terminal-First Origin Story
- Cat Wu discovered the terminal-first UI while prototyping a small chat app and realized models naturally use tools like bash.
- That experiment led to a terminal agent that replaced the editor for many tasks and scaled into Claude Code.
Models Prefer Real Tools Over Wrappers
- Giving the model real tools (bash, scripts) made it spontaneously use them and solve tasks more reliably.
- Replacing many custom wrappers with bash simplified the harness and reduced context overhead for the model.
Solve It Yourself First
- Start by solving the problem for yourself and dogfood the product before wider release.
- Build locally first for coding agents, then expand to web or remote as needed.