Note: the modeling assumptions and conclusion are Thomas Kwa’s opinion, and others at METR disagree.1 Also, the math was checked by Claude but not a second human. Introduction Anthropic’s RSI blog post reported that in Q2 2026, Anthropic contributors merged 8× as much code per day as in the 2021-2024 period. What does this imply about the factor by which a researcher’s total effective output increased — the (serial) researcher uplift2? Of course, 8× more code doesn’t mean 8× more research, as coding is only part of the job. However, if we assume each line of code (LoC) has equivalent quality and verbosity to pre-2025 code and make standard economic modeling assumptions, we can conclude a surprising amount: all models predict researcher uplift at Anthropic from coding agents alone is >2×. (Researcher uplift could be even higher, because these numbers assume no uplift on non-code...