The $20K Experiment: How Anthropic's Researcher Used 16 AI Agents to Compile Linux.
The $20,000 Compiler: How 16 Claude Agents Built a C-to-Rust Compiler from Scratch Nicholas Carlini , a prominent researcher at Anthropic , has demonstrated the raw power of the newly released Claude 4.6 Opus by undertaking an ambitious engineering feat: building a functional C compiler from the ground up using Rust . Utilizing Claude Code , Carlini orchestrated a team of 16 autonomous AI agents to write over 100,000 lines of code, successfully compiling Linux Kernel 6.9 for x86, Arm, and RISC-V architectures. The Multi-Agent Workflow To manage a project of this scale, Carlini implemented a "team-based" AI approach. The key was ensuring agents didn't overlap or conflict: