I clicked because it puts AI into Turing's old job: cryptanalysis. Developer Carter Leffen had Astra search archives, find context clues, build an Enigma simulator, and recover the plaintext. It reads like a clean demo of chained tool use—search, reason, code, verify—all wired together.
I'd discount it a bit, though. The post barely mentions Opus's contribution beyond "also participated." Was it independent decoding, cross-validation, or just grunt work? And the two numbers I actually want—time taken and accuracy—are missing. Did it crack the message in seconds or three days? 100% recovery or half-right guesses? Without those, it's hard to tell if this is a real capability signal or a well-tuned demo.
The direction is interesting, though. Enigma messages have known encryption rules and tons of historical archives, which makes them a decent testbed for long-chain tool use. If someone publishes the full process and benchmarks, it'll be more convincing than the headline alone.