The Claude Code "Leak" Doesn't Really Matter, Here's Why
Code is not that important anymore. This is an article about what is important.
In a world where arbitrary code can be generated to automate a desired outcome, code is no longer a moat. OpenClaw is better than Claude Code anyways, and OpenClaw’s code is already open for the world to see. So what does the Claude leak matter?
It doesn’t.
What matters is:
User experience ownership
Data ownership
What doesn’t matter:
The model
The code to interface with the model
Let’s start with the things that don’t matter.
Things That Don’t Matter
The Model
Countless open source models will continue to be created, and they will perform quite well. As closed source models get better, the open source models will continue to follow right behind.
In case you didn’t know, it’s quite easy big models (Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Qwen, Mistral, etc.) to extract from the other big models. At one point, Grok would consistently respond that it was Claude Sonnet when prompted, which suggests that xAI used Claude Sonnet to fine-tune Grok. When it comes to fine-tuning models, you make use of question-answer relationships to better align human expectation with prompt generation. If one company is doing a good job, it’s not hard to take their outputs to tune your models.
Additionally, the transformer architecture is great, but it’s not the final form of machine learning. It has been an incredible auto-regression technique which has led to powerful results, but it’s only a stepping stone to something more powerful. Imagine a model that performs equally as well as the transformer, but without requiring nearly as much compute to train. Imagine an LLM that can be trained while you use it on your machine. The data center hype would pop in an instant. The world would change course.
The Code To Interface With The Model
Anyone can rebuild Claude Code. Anyone can rebuild OpenClaw. Anyone can make some variation of OpenClaw that focuses on security or a smaller bundle size or whatever.
You can either use an API aggregator like OpenRouter, or you can self-host a model on your hardware.
Self-hosting is only getting more powerful. Back to the point earlier that as model costs go down, as models become cheaper to train and run, the moat between models will diminish. If that’s the case, then the important part isn’t the model, nor is it the agent code that’s built on top of the model.
I’m not saying that building an agentic platform on top of models is a bad idea. I am saying that it’s the most cutthroat race to participate in right now, and differentiation is quickly lost in code.
It’s not only about the code though…
Things That Do Matter
User Experience Ownership
While the code doesn’t matter, having repeat users and product distribution are the things that do matter.
Most people are non-technical. Most non-technical people will become more capable of leveraging AI. Most people will not want to build the tools, so whoever owns an experience for non-technical people will do well for themselves.
Technical people will spend their time rebuilding a service that already exists. Non-technical people will spend their time using the tools as they’re provided.
If, and when, it becomes easy enough for non-technical people to self-host models on their computers, then big tech is in big trouble. If it gets so easy that non-technical people can completely rebuild technical tools with 1 prompt, then we will have a new set of problems to discuss. But I don’t think either of those scenarios will be the case for a while. Self-hosting models is fun for about 20 minutes, then you go back to using a model that actually solves the problem quickly (like Claude Opus).
There is a lot of room in the market for new software products to help non-technical people reap all of the benefits of AI though.
Data Ownership
How you think. The words you use. The things you shop for. The questions you have. The way you learn. The way you don’t learn.
All of this is getting codified, and more.
The world of consumption and advertising is eager for all this data. Whoever owns this data basically owns the psychology of humanity. Google was the best at search for the previous generation. The floodgates have opened, and the companies that own this experience will do anything to stay relevant until they become embedded in the fabric of technology. That’s why these investments are so big, owning the experience and the data comes with a price.
If distribution is what matters, this leak has helped give Claude some publicity without a doubt. Is it a PR stunt? I don’t know, but as the old saying goes:
There is no such thing as bad publicity.