Claire Chen

Effective today, we are: 1) Doubling Claude Code’s 5-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, and Team plans; 2) Removing the peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max plans; and 3) Substantially raising our API rate limits for Opus models.

Introducing Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable Opus model yet. It handles long-running tasks with more rigor, follows instructions more precisely, and verifies its own outputs before reporting back. You can hand off your hardest work with less supervision.

This is Claude Sonnet 4.6: our most capable Sonnet model yet. It’s a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. It also features a 1M token context window in beta.

Introducing Claude Opus 4.6. Our smartest model got an upgrade. Opus 4.6 plans more carefully, sustains agentic tasks for longer, operates reliably in massive codebases, and catches its own mistakes. It’s also our first Opus-class model with 1M token context in beta.

Rage Baiting is for Losers Yesterday, YC announced Chad IDE aka “the brainrot code editor.” Chad is an AI code editor that allows you to gamble, watch TikTok, and use dating apps while working on coding tasks. Their launch rightfully got a lot of attention. On one hand it’s funny. On the other hand, what are we doing here and why does this belong on the official YC account? To understand Chad IDE, Cluely, Icon, Friend, and the new class of Gen Z startups, you have to understand the online environment these founders grew up in. If you grew up on the internet and studied how and why certain people would regularly go viral, you know that making people mad has and always will be a highly effective way to get attention. The feedback loop is simple: 1) make something (product or ad) that makes people angry; 2) people comment/ share/ dunk; 3) because feeds are optimized to show posts with high engagement the most, you get more reach. Rage baiting for commercial purposes was pioneered by course bros. People like Tai Lopez realized that making the masses mad was an effective way to drive course sales. They could flaunt Lamborghinis, make a bunch of people angry, and as long as a handful of people found their way into their course, it was a viable, repeatable strategy. Historically on X, rage baiting was a marketing strategy, not a product strategy. Accounts like @sweatystartup frequently post things to get an angry reaction and subsequent reach, but behind the scenes he's always been running a normal commercial real estate fund. In 2025, rage baiting has become a product strategy. Cluely started as an app for cheating on coding interviews. Chad IDE’s only known differentiation from the other hundred AI native IDEs is that you can gamble and swipe on dating apps in it. The rage bait is sitting at the product level now. It’s becoming clear that while rage bait might occasionally work as a marketing strategy, it really should not be employed as a product strategy. Running a successful VC-backed company requires you to build a coalition of people that want to see you win. Getting media, investors, talent, and customers on your side is not an easy task. Rage baiting (whether at the marketing level or product level) is the most effective way to get people (who could be potential investors, customers, or team members) to actively pray for your downfall. YC has long provided some of the most durable, high quality, generalizable advice for startups and I believe it has had a tremendously positive impact on the companies that go through YC and even those that don’t. Launch now, make something people want, do things that don’t scale, ignore your competitors, etc. As someone who believes that YC is one of the most important and influential institutions in tech, I believe it might be time to include this in their list of essential startup advice: “Rage baiting is for losers.”

you derive things from first principles for the sake of rigor; i do it because i genuinely have no idea what’s going on. we are not the same.

if I were @tryramp I’d be giving @arakharazian a raise riiiiight about now

Forget vibe coding I want vibe updating the CRM

I joined Teach for America in 2010 near the peak of its prestige — ~60,000 applications, some 10% of Harvard's graduating class went into the corps it was hard work for low pay, but it also felt deeply meaningful, paid off a good chunk of my student loans, gave me a huge social network in a brand new city, and then made every single job I've ever had since seem easy in comparison. no research or report or analysis will ever compare to trying to figure out how to get 34 kids at one time up to grade level on reading. I'm grateful for it since then, the prestige of public service has been eroded at both ends. TFA first came under fire from the left for its optics, the idea that kids at elite schools would go teach in low-income classrooms held to be problematic, despite yearly teacher shortages numbering in the tens of thousands. since then, the entire edifice of public service has been in the crosshairs of the right for its ideological commitments all of which makes me think that in the vacuum created by a bad job market, polarization, internet poisoning, etc., making public service cool again seems like a valuable centrist and American project. I don't have a blueprint for how to do this, but I think we could use one

@PixelJanitor @jamesm two amazing people to learn from!! excited for this 🙌🏻

I’ve teamed up with @jamesm on various projects at Tailwind, Clerk, and other contracted gigs. We’ve chatted a lot about wanting to teach, share, and give back to the design community. Shape FM is our new podcast to influence your design and design engineering careers.

@danshipper incredible choice of show

one thing i like to do on the weekend is copy out great writing long hand it helps me feel like what it's like to write something incredible—and i get to ask myself how i would've handled certain sentences / see if i can improve here's one im working on today:

@lulumeservey pitching this as the new "I'm pleased to announce"

@PixelJanitor @nandafyi you should talk to @gaganbiyani about teaching this on @MavenHQ

@nandafyi Oh dang. That's a great idea...

I want to figure out how to help technical designers be more confident working with databases to build their ideas. Pretty much every feature we design and build involves one. I completely empathize that it seems difficult to understand, but it's a superpower when you do.

@danshipper @every @nityeshaga @nityeshaga please teach this course more publicly (maybe .... on @MavenHQ... ?)

every quarter we do a Think Week @every: we don’t publish any new writing or new features. Instead we play, take creative risks, and hang out with each other. this week we’re all upstate. and @nityeshaga is doing a Claude Code for non-devs workshop rn!

me too I’m looking for someone to teach about this (please)

Free PM education alert The folks at @MavenHQ have assembled an incredible lineup of leaders from the top product orgs to break down the skills that define PM success in today's world: - Practical Lessons in AI Prototyping (Q&A) - Thriving as a Senior IC PM in the AI Era - Ascending to CPO: The Path to Product Leadership - How top companies evaluate PM candidates in 2025 - AI Native Products: What Every PM Needs to Know - Build Your Personal Brand As a Product Leader - Top 3 Product Insights from Stripe, Amazon, & Airbnb Many of these lessons will be helpful even if you aren't a PM. Sign up for a lesson here (it’s free): bit.ly/lenny-pm-series

people who have been using the em dash long before ai know that it’s the jazz riff of punctuation, the tightrope between intuition and impulse, the trapdoor for digressions—it’s the writing fidget spinner for centrifugal thinkers

@patriciamou_ @kush__sharma congratulations! ❤️

now I can loop the dune 2 soundtrack with impunity

thank god for the black hole month between Spotify Wrapped and the new year