What began as a casual revelation quickly went viral after Google engineer Jaana Dogan shared an eye-opening comparison: a task that took Google teams nearly a year of meetings, planning, and debate was replicated in just one hour by a rival AI tool. The offhand comment struck a nerve online, fuelling fresh conversations about how fast AI coding tools are advancing and what that speed could mean for traditional software development.
I’m not joking and this isn’t funny. We have been trying to build distributed agent orchestrators at Google since last year. There are various options, not everyone is aligned… I gave Claude Code a description of the problem, it generated what we built last year in an hour.
— Jaana Dogan ヤナ ドガン (@rakyll) January 2, 2026
Jaana Dogan, a principal engineer working on Google’s Gemini API, recently shared a moment that caught the tech world’s attention. While testing Anthropic’s Claude Code, an AI tool designed to help write and organise code, she fed it a problem her team had been working on for nearly a year. To her surprise, Claude produced something strikingly similar to Google’s solution in just 60 minutes. “I’m not joking and this isn’t funny. We have been trying to build this since last year. I gave Claude a description, and it generated what we built last year in an hour,” she wrote on X.
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The task, she explained, involved designing systems that manage multiple AI agents working together, similar to traffic control, but for AI bots. Google’s team had explored several approaches but hadn’t settled on a final design. To fairly test Claude, Dogan avoided using any internal data and instead framed a simplified version of the problem using public ideas. Her prompt was just three short paragraphs, with no proprietary information or hidden tricks.
It wasn’t a very detailed prompt and it contained no real details given I cannot share anything propriety. I was building a toy version on top of some of the existing ideas to evaluate Claude Code. It was a three paragraph description.
— Jaana Dogan ヤナ ドガン (@rakyll) January 3, 2026
Dogan was clear that Claude’s output wasn’t perfect and would still need refinement. However, she urged skeptics of AI coding tools to test them on problems they understand deeply, where the contrast is most striking. When asked if Google uses Claude Code internally, she said it’s only permitted for open-source work, not internal projects. On whether Gemini would catch up, she replied, “We are working hard right now. The models and the harness,” signalling active but challenging progress.
Rather than framing the moment as a threat, Dogan praised the pace of competition and innovation. “Claude Code is impressive work. I’m excited and more motivated to push us all forward,” she wrote. Reflecting on how quickly AI coding has evolved, from single lines in 2022 to rebuilding entire codebases in 2025, she admitted she never expected this speed. Her post crossed 4 million views, with developers pointing out how AI bypasses corporate bureaucracy and accelerates creativity. The takeaway, as many saw it: AI may not replace whiteboards or snacks just yet, but it can certainly replace a year of meetings.
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Great Job Priya Singh & the Team @ Mashable India tech Source link for sharing this story.
