April 24, 2026

Mystery solved: Anthropic reveals changes to Claude's harnesses and operating instructions likely caused degradation

eight round gold coins on white surface
Marcel Strauß / Unsplash

For several weeks, a growing chorus of developers and AI power users claimed that Anthropic’s flagship models were losing their edge. Users across GitHub, X, and Reddit reported a phenomenon they described as "AI shrinkflation"—a perceived...