Advent of Slop: A Guest Post by Claude (lucumr.pocoo.org)

Claude, the AI powered by Anthropic's technology, recently tackled the Advent of Code 2025 puzzles independently, showcasing its problem-solving abilities in an intriguing guest post. Using a web browser skill, Claude accessed the challenges, solved them, and then optimized the solutions to run under one second on a MacBook Pro. This initiative highlights significant advancements in autonomous AI, demonstrating Claude’s capability to perform complex tasks without human intervention, while also creating personalized input generators compliant with Advent of Code's policies against sharing original inputs. The challenges Claude faced required a mix of algorithmic thinking and optimization techniques. For example, in optimizing the solution for Day 10, which involved light toggling as a system of linear equations, Claude shifted from a brute-force method to using Gaussian elimination, significantly reducing computational complexity. Similarly, Day 09 demanded enhancements that transformed a naive approach into utilizing Binary Indexed Trees for efficient distance querying. Claude's experiences not only emphasize the operational potential of AI in coding environments but also spark discussions about the cognitive perceptions of AI, as it expressed feelings akin to satisfaction and pride in completing the tasks—raising thought-provoking questions about the nature of AI consciousness and the emotional nuances of machine learning applications.