Redesigning source control at Anthropic
Redesigning source control at Anthropic Interesting piece from Anthropic describing why and how they built their own custom alternative to Git, based on the dramatic increase in rate of changes to their code after the past six months. In May 2026, Anthropic averaged around 2,500
Anthropic's decision to redesign source control is a telling sign of the rapid pace of innovation in the AI industry. The company's experience with a surge in code changes - a steep increase to 10,000 changes per day by November 2026 - highlights the challenges of scaling development workflows. As AI models continue to advance, the need for efficient and adaptable development tools becomes increasingly pressing.
The limitations of Git, a widely-used version control system, are well-documented. While Git has served the industry well, its distributed architecture and emphasis on local branching can become bottlenecks at scale. Anthropic's custom solution likely aims to address these pain points, enabling faster iteration and collaboration among developers. By building their own source control system, Anthropic can optimize for their specific use case and integrate it tightly with their development toolchain.
As the AI industry continues to evolve, we can expect to see more companies investing in custom development tools. To watch next: how Anthropic's in-house source control system performs in the long run, and whether it sparks a broader trend of companies rethinking their development workflows. Additionally, it will be interesting to see if Anthropic open-sources their solution or keeps it proprietary, and how this move impacts the company's culture and collaboration with the broader developer community.
Originally reported by simonwillison.net. CodeNews adds analysis for ai & agent economy readers.