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Training Data · 2 min · May 4, 2026

Product craft still matters as models improve

Boris Cherny credits product details for Claude Code's appeal and expects a better model to reduce the harness's role. He also predicts less need for safety checks as models improve.

Boris Cherny

Boris Cherny is creator of Claude Code at Anthropic.

  • LR

    Lauren Reeder, Host · Partner, Sequoia

About this segment

Boris Cherny credits product details for Claude Code's appeal and expects a better model to reduce the harness's role. He also predicts less need for safety checks as models improve.

From “Anthropic's Boris Cherny: Why Coding Is Solved, and What Comes Next”, May 4, 2026. Watch the full episode

“as the models gotten better the harness kind of gets less important”
Boris Chernyat 14:09 · Training Data14:09

Takeaways

  1. Attention to everyday UX helped make Claude Code useful.
  2. Better models make the product harness less central.
  3. He expects some safety controls to matter less as models improve.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 5:04Coding is solved for the code Boris writes3:42
  2. 10:22AI weakens some software moats but strengthens others2:34
  3. 14:57Software could become as ordinary as reading and writing2:25
  4. 2:33Claude Code was built before the model was ready2:36

  5. 13:03Product craft still matters as models improve1:55

  6. 17:18Anthropic's workflow advantage is organizational, not model access2:03Up next

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 13:07

    Hi. Yeah, I'm curious. You said that you built six months before there was product market fit, but now, given that the models are good enough, how much do you attribute the success of Cloud Code to the model versus product decisions in the field of the product? I think it's probably a mix yeah I think it's a mix I think if you asked maybe a year ago the ratio was maybe something like 50-50 maybe I don't know if you asked me six months ago the mix would be 50-50 what about in two years oh two I don't know dude we plan on like we plan one week out six months sometime in the future and by the way I think the reason it was 50-50 is you know I I like I did YC back in the day I was like the first hire at a YC company and like I did a bunch of startups and in startups like the thing that they drill

  2. 13:55

    into you and especially NYC over and over is build something people love and so it doesn't matter what the product is it doesn't matter like the model and all this stuff you still in the end have to build a thing that people love and I think that's that's why the product matters is we pay so much attention to the little details so that as you use it all day it's a really great experience I think as the models gotten better the harness kind of gets less important and I think like a thing that we're thinking about right now is like how do we evolve the harness so like how do we make loops more of a first class thing how do we make it easier to run a lot of agents you know beside you know like sub agents is one idea there's a bunch more stuff that we're cooking but I think in a year the model will be much better aligned and

  3. 14:36

    so all the safety mechanisms that we have today around prompt injection and kind of static verification of commands and permission modes human in the loop all this kind of stuff it's just gonna be less important because the model will just do the right thing so yeah that's that's That's my prediction. Thanks. Thank you. Do you want to toss the box, Dan?