Simon Willison
@simonwillison.net
Independent AI researcher, creator of datasette.io and llm.datasette.io, building open source tools for data journalism, writing about a lot of stuff at https://simonwillison.net/
I'm in an episode of the new Data Renegades podcast with CL Kao and Dori Wilson talking about data journalism and Datasette and related topics - it's a fun conversation, here are some extracted highlights simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/26/...
Highlights from my appearance on the Data Renegades podcast with CL Kao and Dori Wilson
I talked with CL Kao and Dori Wilson for an episode of their new Data Renegades podcast titled Data Journalism Unleashed with Simon Willison. I fed the transcript into Claude …
simonwillison.net
November 26, 2025 at 12:33 AM
I'm in an episode of the new Data Renegades podcast with CL Kao and Dori Wilson talking about data journalism and Datasette and related topics - it's a fun conversation, here are some extracted highlights simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/26/...
PromptArmor have a nasty description of a prompt injection attack against Google's new Antigravity AI IDE which can result in credentials (like AWS keys) being stolen by an attacker: www.promptarmor.com/resources/go...
My notes here: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/25/...
My notes here: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/25/...
Google Antigravity Exfiltrates Data
An indirect prompt injection in an implementation blog can manipulate Antigravity to invoke a malicious browser subagent in order to steal credentials and sensitive code from a user’s IDE.
www.promptarmor.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:00 PM
PromptArmor have a nasty description of a prompt injection attack against Google's new Antigravity AI IDE which can result in credentials (like AWS keys) being stolen by an attacker: www.promptarmor.com/resources/go...
My notes here: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/25/...
My notes here: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/25/...
Initial impressions (and pelicans) of Claude Opus 4.5, Anthropic's new "best model in the world for coding" released this morning. simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/24/...
Claude Opus 4.5, and why evaluating new LLMs is increasingly difficult
Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5 this morning, which they call “best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use”. This is their attempt to retake the crown for …
simonwillison.net
November 24, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Initial impressions (and pelicans) of Claude Opus 4.5, Anthropic's new "best model in the world for coding" released this morning. simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/24/...
I love these skits by Shannon Fiedler - the density of jokes and the pace of the editing are both pretty astonishing www.tiktok.com/@shannonfied...
Happy Thanksgiving from the city girls #comedy #thanksgiving
TikTok video by Shannon Fiedler
www.tiktok.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:35 PM
I love these skits by Shannon Fiedler - the density of jokes and the pace of the editing are both pretty astonishing www.tiktok.com/@shannonfied...
Annotated release notes for the new sqlite-utils alpha, which includes several minor backwards incompatible changes that will be released in the stable 4.0 version once the new alpha has baked for a while simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/24/...
sqlite-utils 4.0a1 has several (minor) backwards incompatible changes
I released a new alpha version of sqlite-utils last night—the 128th release of that package since I started building it back in 2018. sqlite-utils is two things in one package: …
simonwillison.net
November 24, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Annotated release notes for the new sqlite-utils alpha, which includes several minor backwards incompatible changes that will be released in the stable 4.0 version once the new alpha has baked for a while simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/24/...
Olmo 3 is notable as a "fully open" LLM - all of the training data is published, plus complete details on how the training process was run. I tried out the 32B thinking model and the 7B instruct models, + thoughts on why transparent training data is so important simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/22/...
Olmo 3 is a fully open LLM
Olmo is the LLM series from Ai2—the Allen institute for AI. Unlike most open weight models these are notable for including the full training data, training process and checkpoints along …
simonwillison.net
November 23, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Olmo 3 is notable as a "fully open" LLM - all of the training data is published, plus complete details on how the training process was run. I tried out the 32B thinking model and the 7B instruct models, + thoughts on why transparent training data is so important simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/22/...
Reposted by Simon Willison
Do you believe #Python is for everyone? Become a PSF Supporting Member! Your membership helps keep Python strong, open, and for everyone- and gives you a voice in the future of Python and the PSF 🐍📣
Become a member today 🪪👉 donate.python.org/
#PythonForEveryone
Become a member today 🪪👉 donate.python.org/
#PythonForEveryone
November 22, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Do you believe #Python is for everyone? Become a PSF Supporting Member! Your membership helps keep Python strong, open, and for everyone- and gives you a voice in the future of Python and the PSF 🐍📣
Become a member today 🪪👉 donate.python.org/
#PythonForEveryone
Become a member today 🪪👉 donate.python.org/
#PythonForEveryone
Pluribus on Apple TV is such a great show - infuriatingly difficult to recommend though since it's so easy to spoil the experience if you share too many details
Just watch it, it's great!
Just watch it, it's great!
November 22, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Pluribus on Apple TV is such a great show - infuriatingly difficult to recommend though since it's so easy to spoil the experience if you share too many details
Just watch it, it's great!
Just watch it, it's great!
Nano Banana Pro, released this morning, is clearly the best image generation model. Superb instruction following, plus it can generate full infographics (with correct spelling and properly rendered text!) from a short prompt based on running extra searches simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/20/...
Nano Banana Pro aka gemini-3-pro-image-preview is the best available image generation model
Hot on the heels of Tuesday’s Gemini 3 Pro release, today it’s Nano Banana Pro, also known as Gemini 3 Pro Image. I’ve had a few days of preview access …
simonwillison.net
November 20, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Nano Banana Pro, released this morning, is clearly the best image generation model. Superb instruction following, plus it can generate full infographics (with correct spelling and properly rendered text!) from a short prompt based on running extra searches simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/20/...
Notes on GPT-5.1-Codex-Max - remember when GPT-5 was meant to signal and end to confusing model names? simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/19/...
Building more with GPT-5.1-Codex-Max
Hot on the heels of yesterday's Gemini 3 Pro release comes a new model from OpenAI called GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. (Remember when GPT-5 was meant to bring in a new era of …
simonwillison.net
November 19, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Notes on GPT-5.1-Codex-Max - remember when GPT-5 was meant to signal and end to confusing model names? simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/19/...
Made a video demonstrating the slightly absurd collection of digital duct tape I use to automate the sending of my Substack newsletter, despite Substack not offering an API www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoPZ...
How I automate my Substack newsletter with content from my blog
YouTube video by Simon Willison
www.youtube.com
November 19, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Made a video demonstrating the slightly absurd collection of digital duct tape I use to automate the sending of my Substack newsletter, despite Substack not offering an API www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoPZ...
New llm-gemini plugin release for my LLM CLI tool, in addition to Gemini 3 support it also adds the ability to pass in a YouTube URL as an attachment in order to analyze that video using Gemini
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
llm-gemini 0.27
New release of my LLM plugin for Google's Gemini models: Support for nested schemas in Pydantic, thanks Bill Pugh. #107 Now tests against Python 3.14. Support for YouTube URLs as …
simonwillison.net
November 18, 2025 at 11:01 PM
New llm-gemini plugin release for my LLM CLI tool, in addition to Gemini 3 support it also adds the ability to pass in a YouTube URL as an attachment in order to analyze that video using Gemini
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
Just found out that MacWhisper, my favorite macOS app for transcribing audio to text (using Whisper or now also NVIDIA Parakeet) now has an Automatic Speaker Recognition feature too simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
MacWhisper has Automatic Speaker Recognition now
Inspired by this conversation on Hacker News I decided to upgrade MacWhisper to try out NVIDIA Parakeet and the new Automatic Speaker Recognition feature. It appears to work really well! …
simonwillison.net
November 18, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Just found out that MacWhisper, my favorite macOS app for transcribing audio to text (using Whisper or now also NVIDIA Parakeet) now has an Automatic Speaker Recognition feature too simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
My notes on Google's new Antigravity IDE - at first glance it looks like yet another VS Code fork but there are some interesting new ideas in there simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
Google Antigravity
Google's other major release today to accompany Gemini 3 Pro. At first glance Antigravity is yet another VS Code fork Cursor clone - it's a desktop application you install that …
simonwillison.net
November 18, 2025 at 8:53 PM
My notes on Google's new Antigravity IDE - at first glance it looks like yet another VS Code fork but there are some interesting new ideas in there simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
My notes on Gemini 3, including analyzing a 3.5 hour council meeting audio recording and performance on a new, improved version of my pelican on a bicycle benchmark simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
Trying out Gemini 3 Pro with audio transcription and a new pelican benchmark
Google released Gemini 3 Pro today. Here’s the announcement from Sundar Pichai, Demis Hassabis, and Koray Kavukcuoglu, their developer blog announcement from Logan Kilpatrick, the Gemini 3 Pro Model C...
simonwillison.net
November 18, 2025 at 7:09 PM
My notes on Gemini 3, including analyzing a 3.5 hour council meeting audio recording and performance on a new, improved version of my pelican on a bicycle benchmark simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/18/...
New release of my llm-anthropic plugin adding support for structured outputs (via the new official API - previously I faked it with tool calls) and Anthropic's web search feature github.com/simonw/llm-a...
November 15, 2025 at 8:52 PM
New release of my llm-anthropic plugin adding support for structured outputs (via the new official API - previously I faked it with tool calls) and Anthropic's web search feature github.com/simonw/llm-a...
Reposted by Simon Willison
Okay folks, after doing some digging I have determined that everyone complaining about AI using precious potable water specifically have no clue what they're talking about. Will finish this soon.
November 14, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Okay folks, after doing some digging I have determined that everyone complaining about AI using precious potable water specifically have no clue what they're talking about. Will finish this soon.
@andymasley.bsky.social you've written a about data center water usage, have you explored differences in water quality?
If data centers use potable drinking water (to avoid damaging their cooling equipment with mineral buildup-up) that means comparisons to agricultural water usage may be misleading
If data centers use potable drinking water (to avoid damaging their cooling equipment with mineral buildup-up) that means comparisons to agricultural water usage may be misleading
November 14, 2025 at 5:42 PM
@andymasley.bsky.social you've written a about data center water usage, have you explored differences in water quality?
If data centers use potable drinking water (to avoid damaging their cooling equipment with mineral buildup-up) that means comparisons to agricultural water usage may be misleading
If data centers use potable drinking water (to avoid damaging their cooling equipment with mineral buildup-up) that means comparisons to agricultural water usage may be misleading
Some notes on GPT-5.1, which is now available in the OpenAI API
The new reasoning options are interesting, but the pelican feels like a bit of a regression from GPT-5 simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
The new reasoning options are interesting, but the pelican feels like a bit of a regression from GPT-5 simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
Introducing GPT-5.1 for developers
OpenAI announced GPT-5.1 yesterday, calling it a smarter, more conversational ChatGPT. Today they've added it to their API. We actually got four new models today: gpt-5.1 gpt-5.1-chat-latest gpt-5.1-c...
simonwillison.net
November 14, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Some notes on GPT-5.1, which is now available in the OpenAI API
The new reasoning options are interesting, but the pelican feels like a bit of a regression from GPT-5 simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
The new reasoning options are interesting, but the pelican feels like a bit of a regression from GPT-5 simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
Since this question shows up so often that it qualifies as an FAQ, here's my definite answer to "What happens if AI labs train for pelicans riding bicycles?" simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
What happens if AI labs train for pelicans riding bicycles?
Almost every time I share a new example of an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle a variant of this question pops up: how do you know the labs …
simonwillison.net
November 13, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Since this question shows up so often that it qualifies as an FAQ, here's my definite answer to "What happens if AI labs train for pelicans riding bicycles?" simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/...
This is really fun - here are my notes on how to try it out using Docker for Mac simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/12/...
November 12, 2025 at 5:17 PM
This is really fun - here are my notes on how to try it out using Docker for Mac simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/12/...
Happy beached whale dynamite day for all who celebrate
On this day 55 years ago, Oregon blew up a beached whale with 20 cases of dynamite.
The Exploding Whale: An infamous moment in Oregon history creates a strangely beloved icon
The infamous exploding whale incident occurred Nov. 12, 1970, in Florence, Oregon. A whale washed ashore on the Oregon beach and with no other means to dispo...
www.youtube.com
November 12, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Happy beached whale dynamite day for all who celebrate
I've now reached the "six coding agents in six terminal windows at once" phase of parallel agent delirium
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/11/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/11/...
November 11, 2025 at 11:01 PM
I've now reached the "six coding agents in six terminal windows at once" phase of parallel agent delirium
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/11/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/11/...
Sent out my weekly-ish newsletter - I left it a bit too long this time and it ended up with three full articles, two YouTube videos, 5 SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles and 3 POV-Ray renders of pelicans riding bicycles simonw.substack.com/p/code-resea...
Code research projects with async coding agents like Claude Code and Codex
Plus reverse engineering Codex CLI to get GPT-5-Codex-Mini to draw me a pelican
simonw.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Sent out my weekly-ish newsletter - I left it a bit too long this time and it ended up with three full articles, two YouTube videos, 5 SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles and 3 POV-Ray renders of pelicans riding bicycles simonw.substack.com/p/code-resea...
Fun new variant on my pelican riding a bicycle SVG benchmark by BeetleB, who instead used "Write a POV-Ray file that shows a pelican riding on a bicycle" to get ray-traced pelicans: blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/O...
November 9, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Fun new variant on my pelican riding a bicycle SVG benchmark by BeetleB, who instead used "Write a POV-Ray file that shows a pelican riding on a bicycle" to get ray-traced pelicans: blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/O...