Boris Cherny on Opus models

by Vojtech: Claude Code

It's wild that Boris Cherny built Claude Code and then dropped the realization that we've been overthinking this whole time. The new Opus models are actually smarter, which means all those long instructions from the past are now just counterproductive noise instead of helpful guides. Old prompt templates don't make the model smarter anymore; they just add static to the signal. His team went so far as to strip out most of the Claude Code system prompt because deleting CLAUDE.md periodically reveals exactly what the model can do on its own without our interference. Yet here we are, many users still stuck using prompting styles from 2025 like nothing has changed. The intelligence of the model has surged forward while prompt engineering has completely failed to keep pace. It feels like a collective failure to adapt when the tools have already evolved enough to handle less hand-holding.