Claude Code’s Next Era — Thariq Shihipar, Anthropic

Swyx (0:03)

We're here in the studio with our friend Thariq from Anthropic.

And I guess generally the Claude Code, there's so much sort of merging of boundaries. And you've been so on top of everything since you joined Anthropic. You have been early to Claude Code itself, but then also, and you've told that story in other podcasts. And you've also been talking about seeing like an agent. Most recently, you did the top AIE Wolf's Fair Talk, Field Guide to Fable, which obviously you guys launched Fable. So that's cheating.

And most recently, also launching Claude Tag. And we're also going to be talking about Pacing the Frontier. There's a lot going on in Anthropic. I guess top of the question is, what's it like being in Anthropic when there's so much going on?

Thariq Shihipar (0:49)

I think that it is like, I think you can get whiplash sometimes. I think like, going, when I joined Anthropic, I joined because of Claude Code. Like, Claude Code had just come out and I was like, this is so good. And Opus 4 to me was like, like just, I could not imagine like how good it was. You know what I mean? And that was like a real moment for me. But I was like trying to convince like my startup friends basically to use agent decoding. And they're like, no, like our engineers don't think it's good enough or something. And I was like, that's insane.

And now you like fast forward, you know, 12 months, less. And like, it's just like, yeah, the default way that everyone codes, right? And I think that like, just having to go from like selling it to like now, you know, teaching people how to be, you know, make the most use of it and be more efficient and things like that is just like a like a big, you know, like big change.

And yeah, I think like, it's just hard to stay on top of everything as a human. You know, like things happen so, so fast.

Swyx (1:50)

You used two more agents at it.

Thariq Shihipar (1:52)

I mean, yeah, like that's actually like the ag, agentic stuff scales much better than the like human stuff where it's like, oh, like there are three things happening right now and like they're all emergencies and like, how do you like, you know, respond to it?

Vibhu (2:05)

What do you split your time on? You do a lot of technical writing, engineering work.

Thariq Shihipar (2:10)

Yeah, so I think that like, when I joined the Claude Code team, I wanted to teach people how to use Claude Code basically. And I think that like that has been something that like, I thought like, maybe I would spend a little bit of time on it, or like, I, you know, like, do, I was spending some time on the Agent SDK first, and I wasn't exactly sure, like, you know, how the bitter lesson would go, you know, when it comes to like, harnesses, right? Like, I think sometimes we're like, oh, like, what's after Claude Code? You know what I mean? And so initially I was like, I just want to teach people how to use Claude Code and make it easier to use Claude Code. And I think that is just like, as the harnesses have gone better and better, that's like the dominant problem now is like, how do you use the agents, right? Like it's like such a high skill expression thing. So I do that and then I do engineering work.

I give talks. But I think like when I'm doing engineering work, my goal is to take that feedback that we get from users and also like then be able to talk about like, hey, how to use Claude Code to do engineering. So there's kind of like a good loop there.

Swyx (3:07)

Yeah, for listeners, we'll attach the talk that you did with Sarah for the Dev Writers meetup, which we talked a little bit about. Well, first you do the work and then you talk about the work, something like that. So and reap?

Thariq Shihipar (3:19)

Yeah, reap and so and reap. Something like that.

Swyx (3:22)

Yeah, so and then just to preview a little bit, we are going to talk about the evolution of the Harness. It has come a long way from just being a CLI. We're going to talk about Claude Mods, which is starting to leak today, because you couldn't keep it secret.

Thariq Shihipar (3:36)

Yeah, basically.

Swyx (3:39)

Yeah, there's a lot there. I think you started off with like adding Ask User Question tool, which people love and hate, actually. I actually thought it was like very innovative. And then now I have like my own version. You have your interview me version.