Simon Willison
@simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy
Open source developer building tools to help journalists, archivists, librarians and others analyze, explore and publish their data. https://datasette.io […]
[bridged from https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
[bridged from https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
Wrote up my first impressions of Claude Cowork, Anthropic's new general purpose agent released today for $100+/month subscribers as part of their macOS desktop app https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/12/claude-cowork/
First impressions of Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s general agent
New from Anthropic today is Claude Cowork, a “research preview” that they describe as “Claude Code for the rest of your work”. It’s currently available only to Max subscribers ($100 …
simonwillison.net
January 12, 2026 at 9:51 PM
Wrote up my first impressions of Claude Cowork, Anthropic's new general purpose agent released today for $100+/month subscribers as part of their macOS desktop app https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/12/claude-cowork/
When I wrote about my JustHTML port from Python to JavaScript last month I chickened out and finished the post with some open questions - I've now made an attempt at providing my own answers to those questions here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/11/answers/
My answers to the questions I posed about porting open source code with LLMs
Last month I wrote about porting JustHTML from Python to JavaScript using Codex CLI and GPT-5.2 in a few hours while also buying a Christmas tree and watching Knives Out …
simonwillison.net
January 11, 2026 at 11:14 PM
When I wrote about my JustHTML port from Python to JavaScript last month I chickened out and finished the post with some open questions - I've now made an attempt at providing my own answers to those questions here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/11/answers/
@chrismessina.me that's next on my list to try out
January 10, 2026 at 12:41 AM
@chrismessina.me that's next on my list to try out
This is a thoughtful reaction to my predictions piece and worth reading https://hachyderm.io/@pythonbynight/115861806434151702
Mario Munoz (@[email protected])
I follow Simon's blog (@[email protected] ), as I find it very informative, thorough, and enlightening. His most recent post on LLM predictions for 2026 did catch my eye and I had a few thoughts I wanted to capture. Keep in mind, they are not repudiations. I happen to have more of a fascination with words and metaphors (damn humanities background), which sends me on certain journeys. Anyway, here you go... https://pythonbynight.com/blog/challenging #LLM #2026predictions
hachyderm.io
January 10, 2026 at 12:39 AM
This is a thoughtful reaction to my predictions piece and worth reading https://hachyderm.io/@pythonbynight/115861806434151702
Sprites.dev by @flydotio is a very cool new thing: it solves two of my pet problems at once, developer sandbox environments for coding agents and a JSON API for executing untrusted code
I wrote more here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/9/sprites-dev/
I wrote more here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/9/sprites-dev/
Fly’s new Sprites.dev addresses both developer sandboxes and API sandboxes at the same time
New from Fly.io today: Sprites.dev. Here’s their blog post and YouTube demo. It’s an interesting new product that’s quite difficult to explain—Fly call it “Stateful sandbox environments with checkpoint & …
simonwillison.net
January 10, 2026 at 12:34 AM
Sprites.dev by @flydotio is a very cool new thing: it solves two of my pet problems at once, developer sandbox environments for coding agents and a JSON API for executing untrusted code
I wrote more here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/9/sprites-dev/
I wrote more here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/9/sprites-dev/
The episode is also available on YouTube, where it features one of the most appropriate uses of AI-generated imagery I've ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDhQMiAbR8
January 8, 2026 at 7:56 PM
The episode is also available on YouTube, where it features one of the most appropriate uses of AI-generated imagery I've ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDhQMiAbR8
I joined the Oxide and Friends annual predictions podcast episode this week - here are my 1, 3 and 6 year predictions for AI and LLMs (and Kākāpō parrots) https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-2026/
January 8, 2026 at 7:52 PM
I joined the Oxide and Friends annual predictions podcast episode this week - here are my 1, 3 and 6 year predictions for AI and LLMs (and Kākāpō parrots) https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-2026/
I forked the wonderful gistpreview.github.io to create gisthost.github.io - here's what I changed in my fork: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/1/gisthost/
Introducing gisthost.github.io
I am a huge fan of gistpreview.github.io, the site by Leon Huang that lets you append ?GIST_id to see a browser-rendered version of an HTML page that you have saved …
simonwillison.net
January 1, 2026 at 10:15 PM
I forked the wonderful gistpreview.github.io to create gisthost.github.io - here's what I changed in my fork: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/1/gisthost/
Made lemon pigs! 🍋 🐷
January 1, 2026 at 5:37 AM
Made lemon pigs! 🍋 🐷
Here's my enormous round-up of everything we learned about LLMs in 2025 - the third in my annual series of reviews of the past twelve months
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/
This year it's divided into 26 sections! This is the table of contents
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/
This year it's divided into 26 sections! This is the table of contents
December 31, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Here's my enormous round-up of everything we learned about LLMs in 2025 - the third in my annual series of reviews of the past twelve months
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/
This year it's divided into 26 sections! This is the table of contents
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/
This year it's divided into 26 sections! This is the table of contents
Looks like OpenAI "Codex cloud" was quietly rebranded to "Codex web" at some point in the last ~48 hours
I use them via native apps so I wanted Anthropic to rebrand "Claude Code on the web" to "Claude Code Cloud", didn't expect OpenAI to go the other way! […]
I use them via native apps so I wanted Anthropic to rebrand "Claude Code on the web" to "Claude Code Cloud", didn't expect OpenAI to go the other way! […]
Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net
fedi.simonwillison.net
December 31, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Looks like OpenAI "Codex cloud" was quietly rebranded to "Codex web" at some point in the last ~48 hours
I use them via native apps so I wanted Anthropic to rebrand "Claude Code on the web" to "Claude Code Cloud", didn't expect OpenAI to go the other way! […]
I use them via native apps so I wanted Anthropic to rebrand "Claude Code on the web" to "Claude Code Cloud", didn't expect OpenAI to go the other way! […]
@Edent I don't think that's entirely fair - they had a very poorly conceived take on the "code of conduct" which they (thankfully) renamed to "code of ethics" instead https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
Code Of Ethics
sqlite.org
December 30, 2025 at 12:58 AM
@Edent I don't think that's entirely fair - they had a very poorly conceived take on the "code of conduct" which they (thankfully) renamed to "code of ethics" instead https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
If like me you have a mental model that SQLite doesn't accept outside contributions you should update it, I just got called out by D. Richard Hipp for spreading that misinformation in a comment on Hacker News
They DO accept contributions, but are very selective (only ~37 contributors total so […]
They DO accept contributions, but are very selective (only ~37 contributors total so […]
Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net
fedi.simonwillison.net
December 30, 2025 at 12:57 AM
If like me you have a mental model that SQLite doesn't accept outside contributions you should update it, I just got called out by D. Richard Hipp for spreading that misinformation in a comment on Hacker News
They DO accept contributions, but are very selective (only ~37 contributors total so […]
They DO accept contributions, but are very selective (only ~37 contributors total so […]
Today in very niche projects: I built a page showing the latest versions of all of the official GitHub Actions (actions/setup-python@v6 etc) so I can point Claude Code and friends at it when they're writing workflows for me https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/28/actions-latest/
simonw/actions-latest
Today in extremely niche projects, I got fed up of Claude Code creating GitHub Actions workflows for me that used stale actions: actions/setup-python@v4 when the latest is actions/setup-python@v6 for example. …
simonwillison.net
December 28, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Today in very niche projects: I built a page showing the latest versions of all of the official GitHub Actions (actions/setup-python@v6 etc) so I can point Claude Code and friends at it when they're writing workflows for me https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/28/actions-latest/
Rob Pike got spammed by "AI Village", a poorly considered experiment in autonomous AI agents which has been sending out unsolicited emails to people (including NGOs and journalists) since April - I wrote up some notes on what happened and how it all works […]
Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net
fedi.simonwillison.net
December 26, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Rob Pike got spammed by "AI Village", a poorly considered experiment in autonomous AI agents which has been sending out unsolicited emails to people (including NGOs and journalists) since April - I wrote up some notes on what happened and how it all works […]
Here's a HUGE example of a transcript - a 15+ hour session I ran from my iPhone where I used Claude Code Web to port MicroQuickJS by Fabrice Bellard to Python. I should probably write more about that project! https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/claude-code-microjs/index.html
Claude Code transcript - Index
static.simonwillison.net
December 25, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Here's a HUGE example of a transcript - a 15+ hour session I ran from my iPhone where I used Claude Code Web to port MicroQuickJS by Fabrice Bellard to Python. I should probably write more about that project! https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/claude-code-microjs/index.html
If you have uvx you can try the tool out with zero-installation like this:
uvx claude-code-transcripts
Doing that will pull up a picker UI to select a recent local Claude Code session, then when you hit enter it'll show you the HTML version of that directly on your machine
uvx claude-code-transcripts
Doing that will pull up a picker UI to select a recent local Claude Code session, then when you hit enter it'll show you the HTML version of that directly on your machine
December 25, 2025 at 11:57 PM
If you have uvx you can try the tool out with zero-installation like this:
uvx claude-code-transcripts
Doing that will pull up a picker UI to select a recent local Claude Code session, then when you hit enter it'll show you the HTML version of that directly on your machine
uvx claude-code-transcripts
Doing that will pull up a picker UI to select a recent local Claude Code session, then when you hit enter it'll show you the HTML version of that directly on your machine
I built a new Python CLI tool called claude-code-transcripts that can create nice readable HTML versions of your Claude Code sessions, both local and pulled from Claude Code for web, and makes it easy to publish them online too https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/25/claude-code-transcripts/
A new way to extract detailed transcripts from Claude Code
I’ve released claude-code-transcripts, a new Python CLI tool for converting Claude Code transcripts to detailed HTML pages that provide a better interface for understanding what Claude Code has done than …
simonwillison.net
December 25, 2025 at 11:54 PM
I built a new Python CLI tool called claude-code-transcripts that can create nice readable HTML versions of your Claude Code sessions, both local and pulled from Claude Code for web, and makes it easy to publish them online too https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/25/claude-code-transcripts/
You can try the app out here - it's invaluable if you ever find yourself needing to cook Green Chef's Blackened Cauliflower and Turkish-style Spiced Chickpea Stew at the same time https://tools.simonwillison.net/blackened-cauliflower-and-turkish-style-stew
Dual Recipe Cooking Timer
tools.simonwillison.net
December 23, 2025 at 5:16 AM
You can try the app out here - it's invaluable if you ever find yourself needing to cook Green Chef's Blackened Cauliflower and Turkish-style Spiced Chickpea Stew at the same time https://tools.simonwillison.net/blackened-cauliflower-and-turkish-style-stew
I wrote about how I've been having a ton of fun cooking with LLMs recently - including having Claude take a photo of two recipe cards and vibe-code me up a custom timer application to help me prepare two meals at once https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/23/cooking-with-claude/
Cooking with Claude
I’ve been having an absurd amount of fun recently using LLMs for cooking. I started out using them for basic recipes, but as I’ve grown more confident in their culinary …
simonwillison.net
December 23, 2025 at 5:08 AM
I wrote about how I've been having a ton of fun cooking with LLMs recently - including having Claude take a photo of two recipe cards and vibe-code me up a custom timer application to help me prepare two meals at once https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/23/cooking-with-claude/
Had my first successful experience using a browser agent to solve a real problem - in this case I had the Claude in Chrome extension help me find some configuration I had lost deep within the Cloudflare control panel https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/22/claude-chrome-cloudflare/
Using Claude in Chrome to navigate out the Cloudflare dashboard
I just had my first success using a browser agent - in this case the Claude in Chrome extension - to solve an actual problem. A while ago I set …
simonwillison.net
December 22, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Had my first successful experience using a browser agent to solve a real problem - in this case I had the Claude in Chrome extension help me find some configuration I had lost deep within the Cloudflare control panel https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/22/claude-chrome-cloudflare/
GPT-5.2 Codex is the first model to decide that pelicans should ride their bicycles in the desert https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/19/introducing-gpt-52-codex/
Introducing GPT-5.2-Codex
The latest in OpenAI's Codex family of models (not the same thing as their Codex CLI or Codex Cloud coding agent tools). GPT‑5.2-Codex is a version of GPT‑5.2 further optimized …
simonwillison.net
December 19, 2025 at 5:23 AM
GPT-5.2 Codex is the first model to decide that pelicans should ride their bicycles in the desert https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/19/introducing-gpt-52-codex/
... and now we're up to four implementations: Python (Emil Stenström), JavaScript (me), OCaml (Anil Madhavapeddy) and now Swift as well (Kyle Howells) https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/swift-justhtml/
swift-justhtml
First there was Emil Stenström's JustHTML in Python, then my justjshtml in JavaScript, then Anil Madhavapeddy's html5rw in OCaml, and now Kyle Howells has built a vibespiled dependency-free HTML5 parser …
simonwillison.net
December 19, 2025 at 12:00 AM
... and now we're up to four implementations: Python (Emil Stenström), JavaScript (me), OCaml (Anil Madhavapeddy) and now Swift as well (Kyle Howells) https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/swift-justhtml/
I see a lot of complaints about untested AI slop in pull requests. Submitting those is a dereliction of duty as a software engineer: Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/
Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work
In all of the debates about the value of AI-assistance in software development there’s one depressing anecdote that I keep on seeing: the junior engineer, empowered by some class of …
simonwillison.net
December 18, 2025 at 2:59 PM
I see a lot of complaints about untested AI slop in pull requests. Submitting those is a dereliction of duty as a software engineer: Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/
I guess we're calling this "vibespiling" now! https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/17/vibespiling/
AoAH Day 15: Porting a complete HTML5 parser and browser test suite
Anil Madhavapeddy is running an Advent of Agentic Humps this year, building a new useful OCaml library every day for most of December. Inspired by Emil Stenström's JustHTML and my …
simonwillison.net
December 17, 2025 at 11:26 PM
I guess we're calling this "vibespiling" now! https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/17/vibespiling/