iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 16/08/2026

Fun bonus: I set Pi up with Qwen 3.8 27B and had it build a script for transforming its own .jsonl transcripts to Markdown... which it did! Here's the transcript of it building the tool I then used to share that transcript gist.github.com/simonw/491e55ac9d74…

gist.github.com

jsonl-to-markdown.md

GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2026

The new Qwen 3.7 27B, running as a 17GB GGUF in LM Studio on my M5 Max MacBook Pro, just drew me the best pelican riding a bicycle I've seen from any model that runs on my laptop It did take nearly 21 minutes to generate, and used 22,276 reasoning […] [Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net]

The pelican has the right shaped beak. The red bicycle has the correct shape of frame. The pelican's wing reaches the handlebars. It has legs on both side of the bicycle. There is a pleasing set of clouds, birds, sun, grass and shadow on the image, plus motion lines behind but not in front of the bird.

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 28/07/2026

Hugging Face just published a highly detailed technical account of OpenAI's accidental cyberattack on their systems - it's wild how sophisticated this was: huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion… Wrote up some of my own notes here […]

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

Ruff 0.16.0 - Astral's fast Python linter - came out a few days ago and increased the number of default-enabled rules from 59 to 413, which highlighted all sorts of problems across my projects (1618 in sqlite-utils alone) simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/25/ruff

simonwillison.net

Ruff v0.16.0

Astral shipped a significant new version of their Ruff Python linting tool a few days ago on July 23rd. I noticed today because my various CI jobs all started failing …

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026

... and if you want to see some of OpenAI's own pelicans they featured a 3D pelican riding a tricycle, bicycle, pony, and another pelican in their livestream this morning: www.youtube.com/live/Wq45rvPGNHs?t=…

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

Since this is a slightly backwards-incompatible change here's a detailed upgrade guide - which you can read, or feed into your coding agent and have it apply the upgrades for you sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/stable…

sqlite-utils.datasette.io

Upgrading - sqlite-utils

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

I released sqlite-utils 4.0, the 124th release but the first major version bump since 3.0 back in 2020 I managed to keep things backwards-compatible all the way up to version 3.39 before the accumulated design mistakes forced me to bump that number! […]

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 19/06/2026

Lots more information in this post on the Datasette project blog, including details on our live demo and uv one-liners you can use to try this out on your own machine datasette.io/blog/2026/datasette-ap…

datasette.io

Host applications inside Datasette with Datasette Apps - Datasette Blog

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 19/06/2026

Think of this as Claude Artifacts reimagined for Datasette - you get all the power of artifacts but with a JSON API to a full relational database, allowing your HTML+JS apps to access and store data in all shapes and sizes

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2026

After two days with Claude Fable 5 the best way I can describe it is "relentlessly proactive" - here's an example where I dropped in a screenshot of a bug and it span up custom CORS Python servers and used pyobjc-framework-Quartz to capture screenshots […]

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026

Since the JSON extras API is a little hard to explain without an example I also had Fable 5 and GPT-5.5 collaborate on this custom API explorer tool for trying out the new feature […] [Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net]

Screenshot of a web application titled "Datasette extras explorer". A URL input field contains https://latest.datasette.io/fixtures/facetable.json with a teal Explore button next to it. Below, a left panel labeled EXTRAS (30) lists checkboxes: all_columns - All columns in the table, regardless of _col/_nocol filtering; column_types - Column type assignments for this table; columns (checked) - Column names returned by this query; count - Total count of rows matching these filters; count_sql - SQL query used to calculate the total count; custom_table_templates - Custom template names considered for this table; database - Database name; database_color - Color assigned to the database. A right panel labeled RESPONSE shows GET /fixtures/fac… with Copy JSON and Copy URL buttons, then a dark JSON viewer showing 200 - 9.9 KB - 114ms and JSON: "ok": true, "next": null, "columns": (highlighted array) "pk", "created", "planet_int", "on_earth", "state", "_city_id", "_neighborhood", "tags", "complex_array", "distinct_some_null", "n", "rows": list of objects.

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026

New Datasette release: 1.0a33, which finally brings documents the ?_extra= JSON API mechanism and brings it to the row and query pages in addition to the table pages (Most of the code in this release was built with the help of Claude Fable 5) datasette.io/blog/2026/api-extras

datasette.io

Datasette 1.0a33 with JSON extras in the API - Datasette Blog

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 06/06/2026

You can try it out like this: uvx micropython-wasm -c 'print("Hello world")'

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026

@slowenough I had it do a NORTH VIRGINIA OPOSSUM ON AN E-SCOOTER too - it made this: gist.github.com/simonw/68560eddb0b2… Pales in comparison to GLM-5.1 though simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/7/glm-51…

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026

Notes on Claude Opus 4.8, which Anthropic call "a modest but tangible improvement" - plus pelicans riding bicycles for each of the five different thinking efforts simonwillison.net/2026/May/28/claud…

SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles, in low, medium, high, xhigh and max. They do get progressively better. Only the max one has a correctly shaped bicycle frame.

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2026

Plugins can also affect the empty state of the new menu - the latest datasette-agent adds a form for kicking off a new agent conversation - live demo (if you sign in with GitHub) on agent.datasette.io

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2026

Fun new feature in Datasette 1.0a30 - a "jump to" menu, also available by the "/" keyboard shortcut, which lets you type to jump to a database, table or canned query. It offers a hook so plugins can extend it with additional content too datasette.io/blog/2026/jump-menu

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/05/2026

I released the first alpha of Datasette Agent - a conversational AI assistant for Datasette that can answer questions about data in SQLite databases, and can be extended with plugins to add extra tools and features You can watch a demo video or try it out yourself on agent.datasette.io […]

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2026

I don't have much to say about this year's Google I/O because I prefer to write about products that have shipped, not just "coming soon" announcements - but here are some notes on Gemini Spark and Antigravity simonwillison.net/2026/May/20/googl…

simonwillison.net

Google I/O, Gemini Spark, Antigravity

It's hard to find much to write about Google I/O this year because I have a policy of not writing about anything that I can't try out myself, and a …

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2026

New TIL: I figured out how to use my LLM CLI tool in a shebang line, which means you can write executable scripts in English, or hook up more complex scripts with a snippet of YAML template - til.simonwillison.net/llms/llm-sheb…

$#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -x -f Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle But you can also incorporate tool calls: #!/usr/bin/env -S llm -T llm_time -f Write a haiku that mentions the exact current time Or even execute YAML templates directly that define extra tools as Python functions: #!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t model: gpt-5.4-mini system: | Use tools to run calculations functions: | def add(a: int, b: int) -> int: return a + b def multiply(a: int, b: int) -> int: return a * b Then: ./calc.sh 'what is 2344 * 5252 + 134' --td Which outputs (thanks to that --td tools debug option): Tool call: multiply({'a': 2344, 'b': 5252}) 12310688 Tool call: add({'a': 12310688, 'b': 134}) 12310822 2344 × 5252 + 134 = **12,310,822**$

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/05/2026

Oh, and Elon said "We reserve the right to reclaim the compute if their AI engages in actions that harm humanity."

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/05/2026

Under-reported details of the xAI/Anthropic Colossus data center deal: Anthropic get Colossus 1 but xAI keep using the larger Colossus 2, Colossus 1 has a REALLY bad environmental record, and xAI just shut down a bunch of older models on 2 weeks' notice […]

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 30/04/2026

I particularly appreciate how this rationale isn't based on the idea that LLM code is of poor quality compared to code written by hand - the quality of the code isn't the deciding factor at all here

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2026

I released LLM 0.32a0 this morning, a major backwards-compatible refactor of my LLM Python library and CLI tool for working with language models - the new changes should help LLM work better with reasoning models and other new frontier capabilities simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/29/llm

simonwillison.net

LLM 0.32a0 is a major backwards-compatible refactor

I just released LLM 0.32a0, an alpha release of my LLM Python library and CLI tool for accessing LLMs, with some consequential changes that I’ve been working towards for quite …

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026

It didn't quite manage to draw me a pelican riding a bicycle, but I still appreciated its era-appropriate response

I couldn't resist hitting the talkie demo with my classic test prompt:

Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

It replied:

An SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle was generated in 1860. The pelican was represented as perched on the saddle, with its long bill pointed forward, and its legs astride the handles. The idea was suggested by the fact that pelicans are sometimes seen fishing on horseback, on the banks of the Rhine.

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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026

Here's a uv one-liner that downloads and runs the MLX model against a local mp3 file uv run --with mlx-audio python -m mlx_audio.stt.generate \ --model mlx-community/VibeVoice-ASR-4bit \ --audio lenny.mp3 --output-path lenny \ --format json --verbose --max-tokens 32768

Screenshot of a macOS terminal running an mlx-audio speech-to-text command using the VibeVoice-ASR-4bit model on lenny.mp3, showing download progress, a warning that audio duration (99.8 min) exceeds the 59 min maximum so it's trimming, encoding/prefilling/generating progress bars, then a Transcription section with JSON segments of speakers discussing AI coding agents, followed by stats: Processing time 524.79 seconds, Prompt 26615 tokens at 50.718 tokens-per-sec, Generation 20248 tokens at 38.585 tokens-per-sec, Peak memory 30.44 GB.

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