The article announces the release of the official music video for "DE STAAT - FREEDOM" by Dutch alternative rock band De Staat. It notes that at 00:44 in the video, visual effects are credited to Matties Grooten of Fake it or Leave it. The post also mentions the video’s presence on Hacker News and tags it with music, AI, generative‑AI, and pelican‑riding‑a‑bicycle.
Simon Willison presented a closing keynote at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, where he showcased a pixel‑art animation of kakapo parrots celebrating a record‑breaking breeding season in 2026. He used Claude Opus 5.5 to generate the animation from Google‑searched kakapo photos, then employed Claude Code with Playwright to record a 15‑second video of the animated HTML5 canvas, which he embedded in his Keynote slide.
Battle Drones is a browser‑based, Command & Conquer‑style real‑time strategy game that evolved through 12 major iterations, adding 3D models, varied terrain, random map generation, and both local and online multiplayer via audio synchronization. The game features nine buildings, seven ground vehicles, six aerial vehicles, and three infantry units, with fog of war, area‑effect weapons, and multiple play modes such as skirmish and last‑stand. The project showcases how AI‑assisted coding (primarily Claude) can accelerate game development and introduce innovative multiplayer mechanics using sound.
Simon Willison introduces GPT‑6 Astra, a new model that offers improved attention to detail, better prompt comprehension, and the ability to generate more sophisticated outputs. The model excels at creating 3D renderings, producing detailed scenes such as gardens, shipyards, animals, cityscapes, and even Dyson spheres. Willison highlights its whimsical creativity, noting examples like a pelican wearing a red neckerchief riding a bicycle.
Simon Willison discusses a new inflection point in October 2026 for creating video games using AI, noting that Claude Opus 5.5 now reliably produces compelling 3D models, music, and especially game design. He reports having successfully "vibe coded" four enjoyable games without inspecting the code, and highlights that the real challenge is now generating novel, delightful concepts that AI alone could not conceive. The author compares Opus 5.5’s fun factor to GPT‑6 Astra, which he finds lacking in that regard.
Panache is a real‑time strategy game for mobile and browser set in France’s Belle Époque around 1900, featuring steampunk elements such as dirigibles, steam‑powered trucks, armored ships, and marching fortresses. The game was released under an Apache 2.0 license and already has a French‑language fork that reskins it to a steampunk 1900s France, adding an animated intro and French‑twisted music. The updates are mainly aesthetic, with new models and an intro video showcased on the game’s page.
Simon Willison created an animated transition tool that morphs a map from the Mercator projection to the Equal Earth projection using D3. The project was inspired by the recent UN vote on the Equal Earth map projection and was built with GPT‑6 Astra (medium) in ChatGPT Work. It showcases how modern AI and web technologies can visualize complex geospatial transformations.
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.
The article discusses how users of major tech platforms, frustrated by the lack of human customer support, are increasingly turning to ChatGPT for help with everyday tech issues. ChatGPT is reportedly suggesting that these users have uncovered a noteworthy story and that 404 Media can assist them. The piece highlights the growing role of AI in both troubleshooting and journalism.
I started building my markdown-svg-renderer tool in May , but I've since added enough features to it that it's worth talking about here again. It's evolved into my ideal tool for sharing Markdown transcripts that include SVG documents.
Simon Willison experimented with Claude Opus 5.5 to compose computer game music, specifically aiming for a style reminiscent of the original *Secret of Monkey Island*. He designed a simple text-based format for the music and built an artifact capable of playing it, including example tracks. The results were surprisingly good, prompting questions about whether this compositional ability is a new capability emerging in recent text models.
Qwen 3. 8 27B scores 52 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index That's the same score as GPT-5.
The article announces the release of llm‑anthropic version 0.29. It introduces support for the Claude Opus 5.5 model, allowing users to invoke it with the command line syntax `llm -m claude-opus-5.5 "prompt goes here"`. The release is tagged under llm and anthropic.