How Ralph Wiggum went from 'The Simpsons' to the biggest name in AI right now

In the fast-moving world of AI development, it is rare for a tool to be described as both "a meme" and AGI, artificial generalized intelligence, the "holy grail" of a model or system that can reliably outperform humans on economically valuable work.

Yet, that is exactly where the Ralph Wiggum plugin for Claude Code now sits.

Named after the infamously high-pitched, hapless yet persistent character on "The Simpsons," this newish tool (released in summer 2025) — and the philosophy behind it — has set the developer community on X (formerly Twitter) into a tizzy of excitement over the last few weeks.

For power users of Anthropic’s hit agentic, quasi-autonomous coding platform Claude Code, Wiggum represents a shift from "chatting" with AI to managing autonomous "night shifts."

It is a crude but effective step toward agentic coding, transforming the AI from a pair programmer into a relentless worker that doesn’t ...