AMD AI directors analysis confirms lobotomization of Claude

Stella Laurenzo, AMD’s director of AI, filed a detailed GitHub issue on April 2 documenting that Claude Code reads code three times less before editing it, rewrites entire files twice as often, and abandons tasks mid-way at rates that were previously zero. Her analysis of nearly 7,000 sessions puts precise numbers on how Anthropic’s coding tool has degraded since early March. PERFORMANCE DECLINE: AMD’s AI director documented that Claude Code reads code three times less, rewrites files twice as often, and abandons tasks at previously unseen rates. ROOT CAUSE: Anthropic’s March 2026 thinking content redaction reduced visible reasoning from 100% to zero over just eight days, triggering the behavioral collapse. TEAM CHURNED: AMD’s engineering team has already switched to a competing AI coding provider, citing Claude Code’s inability to handle complex tasks reliably. PROPOSED FIXES: Laurenzo called on Anthropic to restore thinking visibility and introduce a premium tier for guaranteed deep reasoning. BROADER PATTERN: Anthropic shipped 14 releases alongside 5 outages in March 2026, suggesting quality assurance has not kept pace with rapid growth. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/42796