Simon Willison

datasette 1.0a41

The article announces the release of Datasette 1.0a41, highlighting new OpenTelemetry support added by Alec Garcia and a refactor that consolidates all modal dialogs into a single Web Component, now documented for plugin use.

Simon Willison
Sep 16

datasette 1.0a40

The article announces the release of Datasette 1.0a40, which includes a security fix identical to that in version 0.65.5, new features such as the ability for plugins to launch and manage background tasks via the datasette.add_background_task() method, and a migration to httpx2 to support features like datasette.client.get(). The update also contains numerous bug fixes, many of which were addressed during a recent triage effort for the upcoming 1.0 stable release.

Simon Willison
Sep 20

datasette-explain 0.2.2

The article announces the release of datasette-explain version 0.2.2, noting that the plugin’s plan explanations now work on read‑only stored‑query pages. The author upgraded the demo site to Datasette 1.0a40, which motivated the new plugin version. The release is tagged for sqlite and datasette users.

Simon Willison
Sep 11

datasette 0.65.4

The article announces the release of Datasette version 0.65.4, noting that it includes security updates. It references the Datasette blog for more details on the 1.0a39 and 0.65.4 security releases. The release is tagged as a security update for the Datasette project.

Simon Willison
Sep 11

datasette 1.0a39

The article announces the release of Datasette version 1.0a39, noting that it includes security updates. It references the Datasette blog for details on the 1.0a39 release and the 0.65.4 security releases. The release is tagged with security and datasette.

Simon Willison
Sep 11

datasette-publish-fly 1.4

The article announces the release of datasette-publish-fly version 1.4. It highlights new features such as setting force_https=true in fly.toml, a fix for the "Volume could not be found" bug, and compatibility with app‑scoped deploy tokens. The release is tagged under datasette and fly.

Simon Willison
Sep 7

llm 0.35

The article announces the release of llm version 0.35, which introduces a new OpenAI model named gpt-6-astra for GPT-6 Astra. It highlights the addition of this model to the llm library and tags the release with openai, llm, and gpt-6-astra.

Simon Willison
Sep 29

GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

Simon Willison comments on GPT 6.1‑Sol, describing it as "Near‑Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price." He notes that the model’s pelican illustrations are similar to those of the GPT‑6 family and provides links to the live‑blog of the keynote and to the pelican images. The post is tagged with AI, OpenAI, generative‑AI, LLMs, and playful references to pelican‑riding‑a‑bicycle.

Simon Willison
Sep 18

Quoting Thariq Shihipar

The article announces that Claude Code will now support AGENTS.md files starting with version 2.1.277. If a CLAUDE.md file is absent in a folder, Claude will automatically look for and use AGENTS.md, leveraging Claude Code mods to customize the harness. The built‑in mod is available for use, and users can also create their own custom project instructions.

Simon Willison
Sep 19

datasette-auth-github 1.0

The article announces the 1.0 release of the datasette-auth-github plugin. The author discovered that the plugin was setting cookies without a Max‑Age parameter, causing sessions to expire at the end of a browser session, especially on Mobile Safari. This issue was fixed in pull request #80, and the plugin is now stable and tested against Datasette 0.65.x and 1.0ax.

Simon Willison
Aug 21

Stop Making TUIs

Stop Making TUIs Thomas Ptacek advocates for building real native user interfaces for even the smallest of personal tools, because coding agents have reduced the cost of getting a usable-enough GUI up and running to almost nothing. I wrote about my vibe-coded bandwidth and GPU monitoring macOS task bar apps back in March , and I'm still using both of those on a daily basis.

Simon Willison
Sep 29

OpenAI DevDay 2026 live blog

Simon Willison is live‑blogging the OpenAI DevDay event in Fort Mason, San Francisco, covering the keynote and other highlights. He received a free ticket and a seat in the "creator" area for the keynote. The blog will include notes from the day’s sessions.