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- Boris Cherny Shares the Story Behind Claude Code 👀
Boris Cherny Shares the Story Behind Claude Code 👀
AI PACs clash over regulation in the midterm elections 🗳️
Gina Acosta
February 22, 2026
In partnership with
Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,
In today's issue, we take a look at a conversation with Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, in which he shares details of the journey of developing what is now considered by most as the best coding agent in the market, advice for builders, and what he thinks the future of coding will look like.
Let’s jump right in!
Read Time: 4.5’ min
Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI
Chart of the week: The Critical Minerals Behind the AI Surge
Rival AI PACs Battle Over Regulation in Midterm Elections
AI Findings/Resources
AI tools to check out
Video of the week
TOGETHER WITH ENERGYX
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Chart of the week
The Critical Minerals Behind the AI Surge
The AI data center boom depends on a wide range of critical minerals, many of which the U.S. must import, exposing supply chain risks.
Semiconductor materials are the biggest weak point, with the U.S. 100% import reliant for key elements like gallium, germanium, and tantalum.
China dominates the production of most of the critical minerals, and also controls much of the refining capacity for many of them, making mineral access a strategic factor in the AI race.
AI News
AI REGULATION
Rival AI PACs Battle Over Regulation in Midterm Elections
Two competing AI-focused political groups are clashing in a New York congressional race, signaling how AI policy is becoming a major force in U.S. midterm elections.
Details:
Public First Action, a PAC backed by Anthropic, is spending $450,000 to boost Alex Bores in the race for New York's 12th congressional district.
Bores, who helped drive New York's RAISE Act, has also been the target of Leading the Future, a group backed by figures like Andreessen Horowitz, Greg Brockman, Perplexity, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
Both see this race as crucial, as the winner of the Democratic primary is likely to win the general election.
Leading the Future has already spent $1.1 million on television ads and messages attacking Alex Bores, and has plans to spend $125 million this year to stack Congress with allies who support lighter regulation of the technology.
Meanwhile, Public First Action launched a six-figure ad touting Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)'s record on AI legislation, and the group's Republican arm made a six-figure buy supporting Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) in his re-election.
The escalating political spending shows that the fight over AI regulation is a high-stakes issue for the industry. The outcome of these political battles will have significant implications for the future development and oversight of AI technologies.
AI Findings/Resources
👀 Google shares its latest Responsible AI Progress Report, showing how AI Principles guide research, product development, and business decisions.
🎮 A Roblox game fully scripted using Claude Opus 4.6 Extended
AI Tools to check out
✨ Sparkli: An AI-powered learning platform for children aged 5-12.
🦞 OpenClaw: A self-hosted personal AI assistant that works across multiple platforms.
⚡ Actionbook: Make agents browse 10× faster.
👩🏫 Dokie AI: AI presentation maker.
🔊 Speakly: AI voice-to-text tool that turns your speech into clear, polished messages, emails, and documents.
Video of the week
Inside Claude Code With Its Creator Boris Cherny
Boris Cherny, the engineer behind Claude Code, recently sat down with Y Combinator to discuss several topics including the creation of Anthropic's breakthrough coding tool, the future of software engineering, and advice for builders.
The Accidental Genesis of Claude Code 🚀
Boris describes the creation of Claude Code as "accidental" rather than a master plan.
Initially, Boris just wanted to learn how to use the Anthropic API. He built a simple internal CLI because it was the "cheapest thing" to get running without building a full UI.
The “spark” happened when he gave the model a bash tool. He asked it what music he was listening to; the model autonomously wrote AppleScript to query his music player and returned the answer.
Within two days of the prototype, his colleagues were already using it to ship code. When Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei saw the internal usage charts, he asked if engineers were being forced to use it because the growth was so vertical.
The "Build for the Future" Philosophy ⏳
Cherny’s primary advice for AI builders is simple but radical: don't build for the model of today; build for the model of six months from now. This philosophy has led the Claude Code team to avoid "scaffolding," complex code wrappers that improve current model performance but become obsolete when the next model version is released. "Essentially, the gain is wiped out with the next model," Cherny explains.
The Death of the "Software Engineer" Title? 💼
As Claude (specifically Opus 4.5/4.6) has become capable of writing 100% of Cherny's code, he predicts the traditional role of a software engineer will vanish.
Product Over Code: Future engineers will be "builders" or "product managers" who spend their time writing specs, talking to users, and managing systems rather than typing lines of code.
Hyper-Productivity: At Anthropic, engineer productivity has jumped 150% since Claude Code’s launch. Every function, from finance to design, now uses these tools to automate their own workflows.
The Shift to Multi-Agent Swarms 🛡️
Boris believes that the future of development lies in "agent topologies", that is multiple agents working in parallel with fresh context windows to avoid "polluted" memory.
Parallel Debugging: Cherny now uses "sub-agents" to research and debug in parallel, often finding memory leaks faster than human engineers can.
Autonomous Building: Anthropic's entire plugins feature was built by a "swarm" of agents over a single weekend with minimal human intervention.
That’s a wrap!
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Gina 👩🏻💻