# Claude's new constitution Anthropic

<https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution>

- Host: [anthropic.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/anthropic.com/)
- Saved: January 22, 2026 (2026-01-23T03:24:43Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6b11fc6d9c8b/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6b11fc6d9c8b.json

## What Jamie wrote

Anthropic has been a leading voice, and an open one, on how they build their models. This new "constitution" is part of how they "program" (is teach a better word?) it.

> Our previous [Constitution](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claudes-constitution) was composed of a list of standalone principles. We've come to believe that a different approach is necessary. We think that in order to be good actors in the world, AI models like Claude need to understand _why_ we want them to behave in certain ways, and we need to explain this to them rather than merely specify _what_ we want them to do. If we want models to exercise good judgment across a wide range of novel situations, they need to be able to generalize--to apply broad principles rather than mechanically following specific rules.

And who are the "programmers"? 

> While writing the constitution, we sought feedback from various external experts (as well as asking for input from prior iterations of Claude). We'll likely continue to do so for future versions of the document, from experts in law, philosophy, theology, psychology, and a wide range of other disciplines. Over time, we hope that an external community can arise to critique documents like this, encouraging us and others to be increasingly thoughtful.

Super interesting approach and structure. You can [read the full Constitution](https://www.anthropic.com/constitution) for the complete picture. Truly wild stuff.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT338: Weekly Thing 338 / Authority, Humanizer, Left](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/338/), Notable

## Same host

- [Introducing Anthropic Interviewer | Anthropic](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/dcd42f541b0a/) (anthropic.com, December 11, 2025)
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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution