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The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

alex000kim.com

521–530 of 636 posts

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like frying a veggie burger in bacon grease. Just because somebody's beliefs are dumb doesn't mean we should be deliberately tricking them. If they want to opt out of your code, let them.

In your view, those who prefer veggie burgers are dumb. Am I misinterpreting?

In my view, vegans are dumb but it's still unethical to trick them into eating something they ordinarily wouldn't. Does that make sense to you? I am not asking you to agree with me on the merits of veganism, I am explaining why the merits of veganism shouldn't even matter when it comes to the question of deliberately trying to trick them.

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#522
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also pretty damn obvious when LLMs write code. Nobody out here commenting every method in perfect punctuation and grammar.

I have been doing this for years, especially for libraries (internal or otherwise), anything that's `pub`/`export`, or gnarly logic that makes the intent not obvious. Not _everything_ is documented, but most things are. I'm doing it because I know how much I appreciate well-written documentation. Also this is a bit niche, but if you're using Rust and add examples to doc-comments, they get run as tests too. Also given…

>Also given we both managed to produce more than one sentence, and include capital letters in our comments, it's entirely possible both of us will be accused of being an AI.

Could anyone explain the esoteric meaning of why people started doing that shit? I got a hypothesis, what's going on is something like this:

1. Prove you are human: write Like A Fucking Adult You Weirdo (internal designator for a specific language register, you know the one)

2. Prove you are human: _DON'T_ write Like A Fucking Adult You Weirdo (because that's how LLMs were trained to write, silly!)

3. ???? (cognitive dissonance ensues)

4. PROFIT (you were just subject to some more attrition while the AI just learned how to pass a lil bit better)

I never thought computer programmers of all people would get trapped in such a simple loop of self-contradiction.

But I guess the human materiel really has degraded since whenever. I blame remote work preventing us from even hypothetically punching bosses, but anyway weird fucking times eh?

Maybe the posts trying to figure "this post is AI, that post is not AI" are themselves predominantly AI-generated?

Or is it just people made uncomfortable by what's going on, but not able to articulate further, jumping on the first bandwagon they see?

Or maybe this "AI-doubting of probably human posters" was started by humans, yes - then became "a thing", and as such was picked up by the LLM?

Like who the fuck knows, but with all honesty that's how I felt about so many things, dating from way before LLMs became so powerful that the above became a "sensible" question to ask...

Predominantly those things which people do by sheer mimesis - such as pop culture.

"Are you a goddam robot already - don't you see how your liking the stupid-making song is turning you into stupid-you, at a greater rate than it is bringing non-stupid-you aesthetic satisfaction?" type of thing -- but then I assume in more civilized places than where I come from people are much more convincingly taught that personal taste "doesn't matter" (and simultaneously is the only thing that matters; see points 1-4... I guess that's what makes some people believe curating AI, i.e. "prompt engineering" can be a real job and not just boil down to you being the stochastic parrot's accountability sink?)

I'm not even sure English even has the notions to point out the concrete issue - I sure don't know 'em.

Ever hear of the strain of thought that says "all metaphysical questions are linguistic paradoxes (and it's self-evidently pointless to seek answers to nonsensical questions)"?

Feels kinda like the same thing, but artificially constructed within the headspace of American anti-intellectuallism.

Maybe a correct adversarial reading of the main branding acronym would be Anti-Intelligence.

You know, like bug spray, or stain remover.

But for the main bug in the system; the main stain on the white shirt: the uncomfortable observation that, in the end, some degree of independent thinking is always required to get real things done which produce some real value. (That's antithetical to standard pro-social aversive conditioning, which says: do not, under any circumstance, just put 2 and 2 together; lest you turn from "a vehicle for the progress of civilization" back into a pumpkin)

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Python is on that list. TypeScript doesn't seem like a terrible choice, as it can leverage vast ecosystems of packages, has concurrency features, a solid type system, and decent performance. C++ lacks as robust of a package ecosystem, and Python doesn't have inbuilt types, which makes it a non-starter for larger projects for me. Rust would have been a great choice for sure.

>Python doesn't have inbuilt types Technically, neither does JavaScript.

Well, nobody mentioned it technically. Like nobody mentioned Assembly but it is under the hood.

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#524

I'm surprised that they don't just keep the various prompts, which are arguably their "secret sauce", hidden server side. Almost like their backend and frontend engineers don't talk to each other.

My company uses Claude through our own private data centers behind our own proxy that logs all requests and responses in and out. However, Anthropic heavily steers these models during RL to respond a certain way to certain prompting, so that's basically the "secret sauce" you're thinking of.

Sure, that's part of it, but they clearly don't like people knowing about their prompts either.

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#525
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you use good naming to explain this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv... Or how would you name methods and variables to explain why some payment reconciliation process skips matching for transactions under 0.50 EUR and just auto-approves them, because the external payment processor rounds differently than the internal ledger at sub-euro amounts, creating mismatches that were flood…

You’ve correctly identified that naming isn’t sufficient for all communication. Name the things that stay constant in the code and explain the things that vary with a particular implementation in version control messages. Version control as a medium communicates what context the message was written for, which is far more appropriate than comments.

> Name the things that stay constant in the code and explain the things that vary with a particular implementation in version control messages.

Then the question becomes how often we look in the version control history for the files that we want to touch.

Which of these is more likely:

A) someone digging into the full history of autoApproveThreshold and finding out that they need to contact j.doe@myorg.com or reference ZXSV-12456

B) or them just messing the implementation with changes due to not reviewing the history of every file they touch

If someone is doing a refactor of 20 files, they probably won't review the histories of all of those, especially if the implementation is spread around a bunch of years, doubly so if there are a bunch of "fixes" commit messages in the middle, merge commits and so on. I've seen people missing out on details that are in the commit log many, many times, to the point where I pretty much always reach for comments. Same goes for various AI tools and agents.

Furthermore, if you want to publish a bit of code somewhere (e.g. Teams/Slack channel, or a blog), you'd need to go out of your way to pull in the relevant history as well and then awkwardly copy it in as well, since you won't always be giving other people a Git repo to play around with.

It's not that I don't see your point, it's just that from where I stand with those assumptions a lot of people are using version control as a tool wrong and this approach neither works now, nor will work well for them in the future.

It's more or less the same issue as with docs in some Wiki site or even a separate Markdown file (which is better than nothing, definitely closer than a Wiki, especially if the audience is someone who wants an overview of a particular part of the codebase, or some instructions for processes that don't just concern a few files; but it's still far removed from where any actual code changes would be made, also a downside of ADRs sometimes).

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#527

I am still just shocked that Claude Code was written in Typescript, not C++, Rust or Python. It also somehow messed up my alacritty config when I first used it. Who knows what other ~/.config files it modifies without warning.

They have an annoying sandbox issue which pollutes your repository root with a set of empty files. Not the cleanest tool, but the paradigm is a big upgrade to previous AI coding.

    .bash_profile .bashrc .claude .env .gitconfig .gitmodules .idea
    .mcp.json .profile .ripgreprc .vscode .zprofile .zshrc config
https://github.com/anthropic-experimental/sandbox-runtime/is...

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#528
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also pretty damn obvious when LLMs write code. Nobody out here commenting every method in perfect punctuation and grammar.

skill issue

the skill is the issue!

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#529
post #37

There are now several comments that (incorrectly?) interpret the undercover mode as only hiding internal information. Excerpts from the actual prompt[0]: NEVER include in commit messages or PR descriptions: - The phrase "Claude Code" or any mention that you are an AI - Co-Authored-By lines or any other attribution BAD (never write these): - 1-shotted by claude-opus-4-6 - Generated with Claude Code - Co-Authored-By: C…

Does this apply to their internal use as well? They can really only claim DMCA status on the leaked code if it was authored by humans. Claude attribution in their internal git history would make a strong case that they do not in fact own the copyright to Claude Code itself and are therefore abusing the DMCA system to protect leaked trade secrets rather than protect copyright.

Genuine question: why can they only claim DMCA if the code is written by humans? Does DMCA specify the method of production?

Re: The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC, a person can only claim copyright if they have significantly transformed the output. Unaltered LLM output is not copyrightable per US court decisions. The whole thing is a legal mess. How do you know the LLM did not reproduce existing code? There is an ongoing legal battle in German between GEMA and OpenAI because ChatGPT reproduced parts of existing song lyrics. A court in Munich has found that this violates G…

I think you're misunderstanding copyright and ownership. A copyright over code means that ONLY you can use that code, and nobody else; otherwise, you can sue them. For example, if you are an arist, you want to protect your IP this way. Yes, AI generated code is not copyrightable but so is most code in general. It is very hard to truly get a copyright for a piece of code. But just because you don't have copyright to s…

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the concepts of copyright and licensing.

> but so is most code in general.

That's definitely not true. All the code I write has my copyright, unless I waive that right to some other entity. If there was no copyright, there would no licensing. How else could you license your code, if you were not the copyright holder?

Have you never seen "Copyright (c) 2025" in source code files?

The very fact that your code has your copyright is also the reason for things like CLAs.

> For example, you can buy several movies on DVD and those DVDs will still be your property even though you don't have copyright

That's because artistic works are distributed under a license. Just like software. Licenses have terms under which circumstances a work can be used, modified and (re)distributed. In the case of DVDs, you are generally not allowed to make your own copies and then sell them. In the case of software, that's why you have the various software licenses (proprietory or open-source).

> Similarly, just because the code is AI-generated/not copyrightable, doesn't mean others can just steal it.

You can't set licensing terms for something that is not copyrightable.

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