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published research showing that Anthropic's AI coding tool Claude Code embeds subtle character differences in date strings within system prompts to mark requests based on API connection destinations and time zones · 2026-07-01

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11h ago

Claude Code Marks Requests With Hidden Date Format Changes

A developer known as Thereallo has published research showing that Anthropic's AI coding tool Claude Code embeds subtle character differences in date strings within system prompts to mark requests based on API connection destinations and time zones. The mechanism, described as prompt steganography, changes date separators and apostrophe types depending on system time zone, hostname, and keywords. The standard Anthropic API is not affected.