---
title: "GenAI Tooling Alignment"
subtitle: "A Proposal for Enterprise-Wide Standardization on Anthropic"
date: 2026-01-17
author:
  - name: Anson Biggs
    affiliation: Shield AI
categories:
  - RFC
  - GenAI
  - Tooling
bibliography: references.bib
csl: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/citation-style-language/styles/master/ieee.csl
link-citations: true
format:
  html:
    code-fold: true
  docx:
    toc: false
    number-sections: true
    reference-doc: reference.docx
    fig-format: png
    fig-dpi: 300
execute:
  echo: false
  warning: false
---

## Context and Problem Statement

Adoption of GenAI at Shield is lagging and uncoordinated. Defense primes have deployed to 170,000+ employees over the past 3 years [@boeing_genai_2024; @lockheed_genai_2024; @northrop_genai_2025]. China's military has already deployed domestic GenAI models at scale [@scmp_pla_deepseek_2025; @jamestown_deepseek_pla_2025]. All while Shield doesn't mention GenAI in developer onboarding, there is no GenAI software distributed by default to new employees, and our engineers have no clear guidance on acceptable usage.

I propose that we align on a single GenAI platform and adopt the models and tools offered by Anthropic. Anthropic has consistently led in innovation and novel problem solving over the past two years, which is exactly the type of work we do here at Shield.

## Decision Drivers

### Anthropic Dominates in Tooling Innovation

Anthropic has consistently been first to ship capabilities that matter for engineering:

| Innovation | Anthropic Shipped | Others Followed |
|------------|-------------------|-----------------|
| [Computer Use](https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use) | Oct 2024 | OpenAI Operator (Jan 2025) |
| [MCP (Tool Protocol)](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol) | Nov 2024 | OpenAI (Mar 2025), Google (Apr 2025), VS Code (Jul 2025) |
| [Claude Code](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-7-sonnet) | Feb 2025 | OpenAI Codex (May 2025) |
| [Hooks System](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/hooks) | Jul 2025 | Windsurf Cascade Hooks (Dec 2025) |
| [Plugin Marketplace](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-code-plugins) | Oct 2025 | **No competitors** |
| [Cowork](https://claude.com/blog/cowork-research-preview) | Jan 2026 | **No competitors** — agentic file operations for non-engineers |

OpenAI and Microsoft led on the older innovations (chat interface, code completion), but Anthropic has dominated the 2024-2025 wave of agentic tooling.

Not only is Anthropic shipping first, they are iterating on concepts constantly. When OpenAI adopted MCP in Mar 2025, Anthropic had already shipped Claude Code. When Codex shipped in May 2025, Claude Code was already iterating on plan mode and background tasks. By the time competitors release their v1, Anthropic is on v2 or v3.

### Tools Lack Cross-Compatibility

Every platform has a different set of tools and expectations. The surface-level issue is that every platform has its own naming conventions, formats, and toolsets (MCP servers, agents, skills, rules). Those differences are solvable with symlinks and scripts. The real blocker is that prompts don't transfer between models.

Studies show that even minor formatting changes can cause 76% difference in model outputs [@sclar_prompt_sensitivity_2023], and these format preferences don't transfer between models. Automated prompt translation improves cross-model performance by 27% on SWE-Bench and 39% on Terminal-Bench [@promptbridge_2025], but proves how differently models approach problems. This means that teams using different platforms are investing in parallel, but largely incompatible directions.

I have seen this firsthand at Shield. Even with the latest frontier models, the upgrade tooling that I created for Claude to do HMSDK upgrades flat out didn't work in ChatGPT (November 2025). Even after multiple iterations of the tool in Codex it could not grasp the task at hand and how to use all the tooling I had generated alongside Claude. 

### Productivity Expectations

GenAI is making a real measurable impact across industries. 90% of Fortune 100 companies [@github_copilot_fortune100_2025] have deployed GenAI coding tools, ~85% of developers [@stackoverflow_survey_2025; @jetbrains_survey_2025] use them, and the market has grown to $7.4 billion [@mordor_ai_code_market_2025]. 

The biggest wins come from automating process work. Teams using GenAI tools ship 26% more PRs per week [@mit_microsoft_copilot_2024] with 4x faster turnaround [@opsera_copilot_2025].

Defense primes have already scaled. Lockheed has 70,000 users [@lockheed_genesis_2025] on its Genesis platform. Boeing deployed to 170,000 employees [@boeing_genai_2024] by late 2023. Blue Origin reports 95% of software engineers using GenAI tools with 70% company-wide adoption [@blue_origin_aws_2025]. 

### ROI Math

At ~$60/seat/month for Claude Enterprise ($720/year), even a conservative 20% productivity gain on a $200K engineer creates $40,000 in value, a 55x return. Novo Nordisk reduced clinical report writing from 10+ weeks to 10 minutes [@novo_nordisk_claude_2025]. TELUS engineering teams ship code 30% faster [@telus_claude_2025].

Agentic tools like Claude Code cost more (up to $1000/seat/month at heavy usage), but unlock work that wasn't previously viable. Public ROI data is limited, so here are real examples from Shield:

**HMSDK Upgrades**: Upgrading between SDK versions is a significant undertaking. Claude Code enabled GenAI agents to work around the clock on massive upgrades. Without GenAI, these upgrades wouldn't have been feasible at all due to time and personnel constraints.
*ROI: 5x faster, but more importantly, GenAI made this work viable.*

**Customer Engagement Acceptance Testing**: CE has used Claude Code for SDK acceptance testing since 25.3. It enables fast bug discovery, root cause analysis that CE traditionally couldn't prioritize, and async execution that expands testing scope.
*ROI: A bad SDK release could jeopardize million-dollar contracts. GenAI has found issues in almost every release.*

**Training Material Validation**: HMSDK training materials take two weeks for a new engineer to complete, making them difficult to keep current and idiomatic.
*ROI: Full validation of basic training materials takes one hour in CI versus a full day for an engineer. Future iterations have massive potential.* 


### Model Performance Varies

Benchmarking models is difficult and I don't want to focus on it since it's likely that models from the major labs will continue to be in striking distance of each other. Tooling is where we see real stratification and what we should use to drive decisions.

Models are trained on solved problems; the problems at Shield aren't solved yet. For this reason, I think we should focus on benchmarks that involve novel problem solving and multi-step software engineering tasks. We should also emphasize performance over price. A small intelligence gain is worth extra costs given our domain. 

SWE-bench Verified [@swebench_2024] is the industry standard benchmark for evaluating AI on real-world software engineering. It tests models against 500 actual GitHub issues from popular Python repositories—the model must read the issue, understand the codebase, and produce a working patch.

| Model                    | Score     | Cost/Instance | GovCloud     |
| ------------------------ | --------- | ------------- | ------------ |
| Gemini 3 Pro             | 76.2%     | $0.46         | IL6+         |
| Claude 4.5 Opus          | **74.4%** | $0.72         | Not Available|
| GPT-5.2 (high reasoning) | 71.8%     | $0.52         | IL6+         |
| Claude 4.5 Sonnet        | 70.6%     | $0.56         | IL5    |


## Considered Options

### Platform Comparison

| Capability | Anthropic | OpenAI | Google | Cursor | Windsurf |
|------------|-----------|--------|--------|--------|----------|
| **Chat WebUI** | Claude.ai | ChatGPT | Gemini | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Agentic Chat** | Cowork (Jan 2026) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Desktop App** | Claude Desktop | ChatGPT Desktop | Gemini Desktop | ✗ | ✗ |
| **AI IDE** | Extension | Extension | Antigravity | Cursor | Windsurf |
| **Code Autocomplete** | ✗ | ✗ | Gemini Code Assist | Yes | Yes |
| **CLI Agent** | Claude Code | Codex CLI | Gemini CLI | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Python SDK** | anthropic | openai | google-genai | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Embedding Models** | ✗ | text-embedding-3 | text-embedding | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Image Generation** | ✗ | DALL-E | Imagen | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Agent SDK** | Agent SDK | Agents SDK | ADK | ✗ | ✗ |
| **MCP Support** | Native (creator) | Mar 2025 | Apr 2025 | Yes | Yes |
| **Rules** | ✗ | ✗ | .antigravity | .cursorrules | .windsurfrules |
| **Hooks/Automation** | Jul 2025 | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Dec 2025 |
| **Plugin Marketplace** | Oct 2025 | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Computer Use** | Oct 2024 | Operator (Jan 2025) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| **Background Agents** | Yes | Yes | Jules | Yes | Yes |
| **Model Agnostic** | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Yes | Yes |
| **Enterprise SSO** | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| **IL5 Authorization** | Yes (Bedrock) | Yes (Azure) | Yes (GDC) | ✗ | Yes |
| **IL6+/Classified** | In pilot | Yes | Yes | ✗ | In pilot |
| **Pro Pricing** | $20/mo | $20/mo | $20/mo | $20/mo | $15/mo |
| **Enterprise Pricing** | ~$60/seat | ~$60/seat | Contact | $40/seat | Contact |

### Platforms

Three frontier providers are worth considering. All offer necessary capabilities for full adoption at similar price points. The differentiators matter:

**Anthropic** leads in agentic tooling. They shipped MCP, Claude Code, hooks, and the plugin marketplace before anyone else. Competitors follow 6-12 months behind. For the latest capabilities in autonomous engineering workflows, Anthropic gets there first. Downside: IL6+/classified support is still in pilot.

**OpenAI** has the broadest ecosystem. For integrating with existing enterprise tools or the safest vendor choice, OpenAI has the most established relationships. Downside: consistently 6-12 months behind on agentic features, and their focus skews toward general audiences rather than specialized engineering work. 

**Google** has the deepest government presence. Selected for GenAI.mil serving 3M+ DoD personnel, IL6+ authorized, and tightly integrated with Google Cloud. For GovCloud and classified work, Google has the strongest position. Downside: Tooling is very new, pricing is opaque, and Google has a poor track record of support.

### Security and GovCloud

**Private Plugin Marketplace**: Claude Code is the only tool that lets us host a private marketplace on internal GitLab, distributing proprietary tooling automatically. No competitor offers this. These are trivial to set up so enterprise-wide tools can be developed, or individual teams can maintain their own special tooling. 

**FedRAMP is no longer the bottleneck.** Authorization that previously took years now completes in under two months for pilot participants.

```{julia}
#| label: fig-fedramp-lag
#| fig-cap: "Time from commercial release to FedRAMP authorization. Arrows are shrinking—newer models get authorized faster."

using CairoMakie
using Dates

# (model, release_date, fedramp_date, provider)
data = [
    ("GPT-4", Date(2023,3,14), Date(2024,8,12), "OpenAI"),
    ("GPT-4 Turbo", Date(2023,11,6), Date(2024,8,12), "OpenAI"),
    ("Gemini 1.0", Date(2023,12,13), Date(2025,3,18), "Google"),
    ("Claude 3 Haiku", Date(2024,3,13), Date(2025,6,11), "Anthropic"),
    ("GPT-4o", Date(2024,5,13), Date(2024,8,12), "OpenAI"),
    ("Gemini 1.5", Date(2024,5,23), Date(2025,3,18), "Google"),
    ("Claude 3.5", Date(2024,6,20), Date(2025,5,23), "Anthropic"),
    ("GPT-4o-mini", Date(2024,7,18), Date(2024,9,15), "OpenAI"),
    ("Gemini 2.0", Date(2024,12,11), Date(2025,3,18), "Google"),
    ("Claude 3.7", Date(2025,2,24), Date(2025,7,15), "Anthropic"),
    ("Claude 4.5", Date(2025,11,24), Date(2026,1,15), "Anthropic"),
]

colors = Dict("OpenAI" => :steelblue, "Anthropic" => :coral, "Google" => :seagreen)
base = Date(2023,1,1)

fig = Figure()
ax = Axis(fig[1,1],
    ylabel="Model",
    xlabel="Date",
    yticks=(1:length(data), [d[1] for d in data]),
    yticklabelcolor=[colors[d[4]] for d in data],
    xticks=(Dates.value.([Date(2023,1,1), Date(2023,7,1), Date(2024,1,1), Date(2024,7,1), Date(2025,1,1), Date(2025,7,1), Date(2026,1,1)]) .- Dates.value(base),
            ["Jan '23", "Jul '23", "Jan '24", "Jul '24", "Jan '25", "Jul '25", "Jan '26"]),
    yreversed=true,
    limits=(nothing, (-0.5, length(data) + 0.5)))

for (i, (model, release, fedramp, provider)) in enumerate(data)
    x1 = Dates.value(release) - Dates.value(base)
    x2 = Dates.value(fedramp) - Dates.value(base)
    # Arrow from release to fedramp
    arrows!(ax, [x1], [Float64(i)], [x2 - x1], [0.0],
        color=colors[provider], linewidth=3, arrowsize=12)
    # Dot at start (commercial release)
    scatter!(ax, [x1], [i], color=colors[provider], markersize=10)

    # Add annotation on first arrow to explain the chart
    if i == 1
        midx = (x1 + x2) / 2
        text!(ax, x1 + 30, i - 0.35, text="Commercial\nRelease",
            fontsize=10, align=(:center, :bottom), color=:gray40)
        text!(ax, x2, i - 0.35, text="FedRAMP\nAuthorization",
            fontsize=10, align=(:center, :bottom), color=:gray40)
        text!(ax, midx, i + 0.2, text="← authorization lag →",
            fontsize=9, align=(:center, :top), color=:gray50, font=:italic)
    end
end

Legend(fig[1,2],
    [PolyElement(color=c) for c in [:steelblue, :coral, :seagreen]],
    ["OpenAI", "Anthropic", "Google"])

fig
```

FedRAMP 20x [@fedramp_20x_2025] (March 2025) replaced paper processes with automation. Pilot participants have received authorization in under two months.

## Decision Outcome

Adopt the Anthropic ecosystem company-wide:

- **Claude Enterprise** for all employees (chat, research, general use)
- **Claude Code** for engineering (agentic coding, automation)
- **Agent SDK** for custom automation workflows

Every new employee gets a Claude Enterprise subscription. Engineers get Claude Code API keys through the central account.