An email went public

On Thursday, Anthropic's Boris Cherny posted a developer's email to him on X. The subject line: "What to do about slop?" He says messages like it arrive every day, and he tries to answer as many as he can.

“What to do about slop?”

Why developers are writing in

AI has rewritten what coding is. Job descriptions shifted and engineers became reviewers of machine output. Some find it freeing, others call it lonely and tedious.

Two camps, one referee

The unnamed developer described real friction on his team and split it into two positions, then asked Cherny to broker the dispute: restrained, careful use of AI tools versus the permissive vibe coding approach.

Forcing it out of fear

The developer's sharpest point was about people, not tools. Plenty of engineers cannot actually pull off the careful approach, but they push AI anyway because they are scared of being laid off.

“A lot of people are just forcing it”

Room for both

Cherny posted his full reply and refused to pick a side. He gave ground to the relaxed approach and to cautious reviewing, treating each as a legitimate way to work.

Hold the bar

The developer's job, Cherny wrote, is to hold the bar on code quality. Act like a manager, a "mini CEO" in AI-leader shorthand, and stop bad code cold. If that fails: get hands-on, ask for a rewrite, or wait for the next model.

“Or, wait for the next model”