Torvalds pushes Claude Code-written patches to Linux kernel repo
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has pushed a branch called "noref-filemap-read-with-llm" to his personal Git repository, containing patches that reduce reference-count contention in the page cache when multiple threads read small chunks of the same file. In the patch notes he says the code, test programs, review and the first draft of the cover letter were produced by an LLM coding assistant (Claude Code) under his direction, with performance measurements run on his own machine. A separate "assoc-array-fixes" tag covers readability refactoring of the kernel's associative array code, started after developer Nils Ollrogge reported a bug; testing confirmed that bug and uncovered three further defects traced back to the library's introduction to the kernel in 2013. Neither series has been merged into mainline yet, and both could move forward during the Linux 7.4 merge window.
It shows a top kernel maintainer using an AI assistant on core system code while insisting that human judgement, testing and review still decide what actually lands.