Doesn't seem so crazy if the point is to avoid leaking new features, models, codenames, etc.

Where the hell are people getting this idea that it's ok to be deceptive because they are keeping secrets?

No shit they have secrets. I have secrets too. That doesn't make it ok for me to deceive you in any way.

How would you feel if I deceived you and my excuse was "oh I was just trying some new secret technique of mine"?

How did we get to this point where we let enormously powerful companies get away with more than individuals?

The feature seems pretty obviously for Anthropic employees who are using unreleased models internally and do not want to leak any details in public commit messages.