GitHub Pull Requests Are Turning 'Claude-Like': What 460,000 PRs Reveal
A new analysis of roughly 460,000 GitHub pull requests found a distinct vocabulary cluster resembling Claude's writing style jumped from 0.7% in early 2025 to nearly 39% by mid-2026. The study never looked at the actual code changes, only the words contributors used to describe them. Specific terms like 'load-bearing,' 'seam,' and 'byte-identical' turned out to be reliable markers of this shift. What Happened An independent study clustered roughly 460,000 GitHub pull requests purely by the vocabulary used in PR descriptions and commit messages, ignoring the underlying code entirely. It found that a specific writing-style cluster grew from just 0.7% of PRs in early 2025 to nearly 39% by mid-2026 — a shift large enough to reshape what a 'typical' PR description looks like across a huge, real-world sample. The Telltale Words The cluster is marked by recurring word choices: 'load-bearing,' 'plainly,' 'quietly,'...