Cat Wu announces departure from Anthropic, reflecting on two years of Claude Code
Cat Wu announced that last Friday was her final day at Anthropic; she was involved in turning Claude Code from an internal small tool into an industry-grade product. She recalled that two years ago she had Claude Code build an RL env, guiding it for dozens of hours without writing a single line of code herself; early users of the product approved permission prompts almost one by one manually, whereas now Claude's judgment is trusted by default for automatic approval, and Claude is already able to complete large-scale migrations and build new products.
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Friday was my last day at Anthropic.
Two years ago, when Claude Code was a small internal tool, I asked it to build an RL env. I steered it for tens of hours but never manually wrote a line of code. It worked, I was hooked, and I joined the team.
When we first launched, most people approved every permission prompt by hand and mostly used Claude to answer questions and write tests.
Today, the default is trusting Claude's judgment to auto-approve. Claude does large migrations and builds new products.
Helping build Claude Code into an industry-defining product has been the journey of a lifetime.
Thank you to the incredible team behind Claude Code, Cowork, and Tag. These products are the sum of thousands of great ideas from you. I'll miss working with you all.
Thank you to our users for embracing a new way of working. Your constant feedback shaped so much of what we shipped and your stories made the work so meaningful.
Excited to see what you all make next!