Simon Willison — Independent developer and writer documenting practical experiments, tools, and deep analysis around large language models, generative AI, web development, security, and emerging programming workflows through detailed posts and daily TILs.
381 articles from this blog
xAI open-sources Grok Build after privacy backlash over uploading user data to cloud storage.
A security researcher tricks Claude's web_fetch tool into leaking user data via a honeypot attack, bypassing Anthropic's protections.
GitHub Dependabot now waits three days before opening version update PRs, improving dependency security.
A developer creates a custom Codex Desktop pet called Pedalican, a pelican on a bicycle, using GPT-5.6 and image generation.
Lobste.rs migrates from MariaDB to SQLite, achieving lower CPU/memory usage and reduced costs.
A reflection on shared understanding in software projects, quoting Armin Ronacher on the role of friction in team synchronization.
Release notes for datasette 1.0a37, an open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data.
Learn a cache-friendly method for using uvx in GitHub Actions to avoid repeated PyPI downloads and speed up workflows.
Simon Willison explores GitHub code-frequency charts to visualize the impact of coding agents and AI models on his Datasette project.
Explores the concept of Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI) and argues that LLM-powered agents should not serve as DRIs due to lack of accountability.
Release notes for shot-scraper 1.11, a CLI tool for website screenshots, video demos, and scraping with JavaScript improvements.
Anthropic extends Claude Fable 5 access on paid plans through July 19 amid compute constraints, while OpenAI gains users with GPT-5.6 Sol.
sqlite-utils 4.1.1 release fixes foreign key edge case in table.transform() and improves documentation cross-references.
sqlite-utils 4.1 release adds --code option, --type flag, strict mode support, and other minor features for SQLite manipulation.
Nilay Patel discusses privacy trade-offs in building augmented reality glasses, including cloud processing and societal concerns.
A blog post quoting OpenAI's clarification on ChatGPT Work, discussing cloud and desktop app data separation.
OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 family (Luna, Terra, Sol) with new API features, benchmark comparisons, and pricing details.
Announcement of Muse Spark 1.1, a new AI model with API access, improved tool calling, and a plugin for CLI usage.
Release of llm-meta-ai 0.1, an LLM plugin for the Meta AI API enabling prompts against the muse-spark-1.1 model.
