The Decoder's writeup of Claude's protein-design run is a notable result, but the numbers deserve a cold look. A funnel from 318,000 designs down to two strong Cn2 binders means roughly an 8% hit rate among lab-tested candidates — a solid figure for de novo binder design, where single-digit success is normal. The catch, which the piece itself flags, is that tight binding is not antivenom: in vivo neutralization, dosing and safety are the hard part, and none of that is demonstrated yet. The bigger story is strategic — Anthropic is positioning Claude Science as a general engine for discovery, stepping onto turf long held by specialized tools like AlphaFold and RFdiffusion. Whether a general LLM can truly outperform purpose-built protein-design pipelines, or is simply orchestrating their tooling, stays open. If independent labs confirm these binders, this is a real milestone; until then, tr