# Anthropic says Claude planned a complex molecule synthesis route in half an hour

> Original title: Planning and executing the reactions to make a complex molecule (a “route”) is one of the hardest jobs in organic chemistry.

- Source: Claude
- Published: 2026-11-09T21:06:33.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/gu9xui7auhodeny6mt4wkjcyt
- Original: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2119899468812386425

## Summary

Anthropic says Claude wrote a complete synthesis route for four complex molecules in about half an hour. It used one image of each molecule, no internet access, and code as its only tool. The image shows the GDGT-4 target and part of the planned route, which the post says has not yet been tested in a lab.

## Why it matters

The post shows a concrete chemistry task completed from images and code alone, giving a checkable example of AI planning multi-step synthesis.

## Post

Planning and executing the reactions to make a complex molecule (a “route”) is one of the hardest jobs in organic chemistry.

From one image of each of four molecules, with no internet and with code as its only tool, Claude wrote a complete route in about half an hour.

![](https://badinfluence.news/api/img-proxy?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FHWtc8WnXkAAEB5D.jpg&mode=thumb&exp=1794528000&sig=94029b3cecd17bca)