ByteDance has been tightening employee access to outside AI tools since the start of November, TechNode reported, citing reports in China. Under the new rules, employees may not use accounts they bought themselves for tools such as Claude and Codex to access internal resources. The restriction covers all L4-level code repositories and Feishu documents across the company, and some uses within the Seed team are reportedly exempt.
Hong Dingkun, ByteDance's vice president of technology, said on the internal platform that the move is driven mainly by data security, and that any leak of information classified at L3 or above could be serious. He rejected the idea that the company is blocking rivals to push its own products, saying there is no point promoting a product by banning alternatives.
It is not the first time: in May 2025 ByteDance was reported to be phasing out outside coding tools such as Cursor and Windsurf in favor of its in-house assistant Trae. This time the scope is wider, covering not only plugins in development environments but also direct access through personal AI accounts. ByteDance has not made an official announcement.