Simon Willison has released the September edition of his sponsors‑only monthly newsletter. The issue covers new Fable class models, a pricing war, 3D graphics with Blender and pixel art, LLMs applied to mathematics, accidental cyberattacks, the vulnapocalypse affecting Datasette, his current tools, and software releases for 2026. Sponsors can access the full newsletter for $10/month, with an August preview available for free.
Simon Willison announces that the August edition of his sponsors‑only monthly newsletter is now available. The issue covers topics such as OpenAI’s accidental cyberattacks, new game releases, Claude auto mode, ChatGPT work model updates, and miscellaneous projects and tools he’s using. A preview of the July newsletter is also provided, and sponsors can access the full content for $10 per month.
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.
The article reflects on the shift in perspective after the release of Fable, a new model that promised to solve many coding challenges at a comparable or lower cost. Prior to Fable, developers felt it was pointless to invest heavily in coding tools or context strategies, as newer models would likely render them obsolete. However, Fable’s performance was so impressive that, despite its high cost, it prompted a reevaluation of how work was distributed across different models such as Opus, 5.6, K3, and GLM.
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 released the llm-typesafe 0.1a0 plugin, adding support for TypeSafe AI’s Jev model to the LLM tool. Users install it with `llm install llm-typesafe`, set an API key, and can then ask Jev-model questions such as yes/no, choice, or scoring queries via the `llm -m jev` command. The release includes examples for each question type and references a README for further details.
SF October 14th: A Birds of a Feather Session on Agentic Engineering I'm hosting an evening event with Jesse Vincent in San Francisco on Wednesday 14th October for people who are building weird and in...
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 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.
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.
The release of llm-gemini 0.34 introduces the new Gemini 3.8‑Flash model, available in low, medium, and high thinking levels, and fixes an issue where async responses failed to record the resolved model version. The update also notes that Google has released Gemini 3.8‑Flash (and a restricted 3.8 Flash Cyber version) today, with example outputs (pelicans) demonstrating the model’s performance across the different thinking levels. The author highlights Gemini Flash’s speed, low cost, and competence in generating HTML, JavaScript, and Markdown‑SVG content, citing a 13‑second, 1.8‑cent example of an HTML output.
But then users start to report a weird bug. It's the 4th time your team has been trying to fix it.
Simon Willison delivered a closing keynote at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, outlining the key developments in large language models for 2026. He highlighted the release of Claude Opus 4.5 and GPT‑5.1 in November 2025, noting that their coding agents became reliable enough for daily use. Willison also discussed early benchmarks, such as generating an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle, and mentioned a new GitHub repository called "Warelay" that emerged during the year.