Linus Torvalds Used AI Tool Claude Code to Develop Linux Kernel Patches

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system kernel, has officially announced that he used an AI assistant to write kernel code. The kernel is the core component of the Linux operating system, so the move has drawn attention in the wider programming community. The news was reported by the Latvian outlet Kursors.lv.

A series of eight patches

Torvalds submitted a series of eight patches. A patch is a proposed change to software code. The series was developed with the help of Claude Code, a tool created by the AI company Anthropic.

What Torvalds said in his announcement

In his announcement on Git, the version control system where kernel developers discuss and collect changes, Torvalds explained how the AI tool was used. According to him, the large language model helped produce the code, the test programs and the code review. Even the initial draft of the patch description was created with the model's assistance.

The source text is truncated at this point, so other details of the announcement are not known. What is clear is that the creator of the Linux kernel openly acknowledged using artificial intelligence in code he wrote himself, rather than keeping it quiet.