Anthropic Publishes Claude's Full 'Constitution' — A Philosophical Blueprint for How Its AI Should Think, Feel, and Behave
Anthropic released its most detailed behavioral specification yet: a sprawling, CC0-licensed document that reads less like a product spec and more like a treatise on artificial virtue. The company says it's written primarily for Claude and used directly in training.
Anthropic published what it calls a new "constitution" for Claude on Wednesday — a sweeping document that attempts to codify not just what the model should do, but what kind of entity it should aspire to be. As @AnthropicAI announced, the constitution is "a detailed description of our vision for Claude's behavior and values" that is "written primarily for Claude, and used directly in our training process." The document was released under a CC0 public domain license, meaning anyone — including competitors — can use it freely.
The constitution represents a significant evolution in how AI labs communicate behavioral expectations to their models. As @AmandaAskell, who led much of the work, noted, it is "the culmination of a lot of work by many people." Previous iterations of Anthropic's alignment approach moved from simple constitutional principles to character traits; this version expands into a full explanatory framework designed to help the model generalize rather than memorize specific rules. The idea is that if Claude understands *why* a behavior is desirable — rather than just *which* behavior is expected — it will handle novel situations more gracefully.
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