January 3, 2026
AI speedruns Google
Google engineer says Claude Code built in one hour what her team spent a year on
Internet roasts Google as Claude codes a “year” in 60 minutes — skeptics cry copy-paste
TLDR: A Google engineer says Claude Code built in one hour what her team spent a year on, triggering a comment war. Some mocked Google, others said the AI only remixed human work, while fans cheered the speed—highlighting how fast coding bots are reshaping how software gets made.
A Google principal engineer dropped a bomb: she says Anthropic’s Claude Code built a working version of a multi‑agent coordinator in about an hour—something her team’s been wrestling with for a year. Cue the internet sirens. One camp lit Google up like a Christmas tree, calling it a corporate maze where ideas go to die. Another camp wasn’t buying the hype, insisting the human team did the hard thinking and the bot just spit it back at warp speed. The receipts? Her post on X is here: link.
There’s more spice. Fans hailed this as the “AI speedrun any%,” while doom-posters yelled “sell Google stock!” Meanwhile, the engineer herself stayed classy, praising Claude Code and saying the industry isn’t a zero-sum game—also adding that Google’s Gemini team is “working hard.” And Claude Code’s creator Boris Cherny chimed in with pro tips: let Claude check its own work to double or triple quality, use planning mode, run parallel agents, and tag the bot in code reviews. Translation: the AI isn’t just typing, it’s project-managing.
The meta-drama: people are shocked at how fast coding bots upgraded—from auto-completing lines in 2022 to building apps now, with full codebase rewrites looming next. Is this the future of software... or just a flashy remix machine? The comments can’t agree, and that’s the show.
Key Points
- •Google’s Jaana Dogan says Claude Code produced a distributed agent orchestration system in about one hour, comparable to a year of her team’s work.
- •The prompt used was brief (three paragraphs) and based on a simplified version without internal Google details; the output requires refinement.
- •Google allows Claude Code use for open-source projects only; Dogan said Gemini is being actively developed to reach similar capabilities.
- •Dogan outlined a rapid progression in AI-assisted coding from line completion (2022) to anticipated full codebase restructuring by 2025.
- •Claude Code creator Boris Cherny recommends self-verification feedback loops, plan mode, subagents, parallel instances, and tool integrations to improve results.