Flux
Couleur d'accent
Claude Opus 4.8: "a modest but tangible improvement"

Claude Opus 4.8: "a modest but tangible improvement"

Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.8 today. My favourite thing about it is this note in the release announcement: Users will find Opus 4.8 to be a modest but tangible improvement on its predecessor. There’s still more to be done: we’re working on developing and releasing models that provide many of the same capabilities as Opus at a lower cost. It's so refreshing to see an AI lab honestly describe a release as a minor incremental improvement over the previous model! Honesty seems to be a theme.…

Simon Willison's Weblog
llm-anthropic 0.25.1

llm-anthropic 0.25.1

Release: llm-anthropic 0.25.1 New model: Claude Opus 4.8 (claude-opus-4.8). New -o fast 1 option for fast mode, for organizations with that feature enabled on their account. Default max_tokens for each model now defaults to that model's maximum output rather than 8,192. #72 See also my notes on Opus 4.8 - I used this new release of llm-anthropic to generate the pelicans.

Simon Willison's Weblog
markdown-svg-renderer

markdown-svg-renderer

Tool: markdown-svg-renderer A slightly customized Markdown rendering tool with special treatment for fenced code SVG blocks - it both renders the image and provides a tab for switching to the code view. You can paste in Markdown or give it a URL to a CORS-enabled Markdown file or Gist. Here's an example where it loads a Markdown file full of LLM pelican logs for Opus 4.8. Tags: svg, tools, markdown, cors

Simon Willison's Weblog
sqlite AGENTS.md

sqlite AGENTS.md

sqlite AGENTS.md SQLite gained an AGENTS.md file five days ago - but it's not intended for their own development, it's presumably aimed at people who are pointing agents at the SQLite codebase. It includes: SQLite does not accept pull requests without prior agreement and/or accompanying legal paperwork that places the pull request in the public domain. However, the human SQLite developers will review a concise and well-written pull request as a proof-of-concept prior to reimplementing the…

Simon Willison's Weblog
I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

Anthropic are strongly rumored to be about to have their first profitable quarter. Stories are circulating of companies surprised at how expensive their LLM bills are becoming from usage by their staff. I think this is because OpenAI and Anthropic have both found product-market fit. Enterprise customers are now paying API prices I think they've found product-market fit And they're ramping up The AI-failure stories around this are pretty thin We also know the labs are spending a lot API revenue…

Simon Willison's Weblog
Agent Skills

Agent Skills

The following article originally appeared on Addy Osmani’s blog and is being reposted here with the author’s permission. The default behavior of any AI coding agent is to take the shortest path to “done.” Ask for a feature and it writes the feature. It doesn’t ask whether you have a spec, write a test before […]

O'Reilly Radar — AI/ML
The pressure

The pressure

The pressure Daniel Stenberg on the unprecedented level of pressure the curl team are facing right now thanks to the deluge of (credible) AI-assisted security issues being reported. The rate of incoming security reports is 4-5 times higher than it was in 2024 and double the speed of 2025 -- meaning that on average we now get more than one report per day. The quality is way higher than ever before. The reports are typically very detailed and long. [...] For the first time in my life, my wife…

Simon Willison's Weblog
Microsoft Copilot Cowork Exfiltrates Files

Microsoft Copilot Cowork Exfiltrates Files

Microsoft Copilot Cowork Exfiltrates Files The biggest challenge in designing agentic systems continues to be preventing them from enabling attackers to exfiltrate data. In this case Microsoft Copilot Cowork (yes, that's a real product name) was allowing agents to send emails to the user's own inbox without approval... but those messages were then displayed in a way that could leak data to an attacker via rendered images: Because these messages can contain external images that trigger network…

Simon Willison's Weblog
Quoting Paul Graham

Quoting Paul Graham

A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it. I have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI. It feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that? [...] It makes me think less of the author. It means they can't write well unaided (or feel they can't),…

Simon Willison's Weblog
Esc