Simon Willison

Simon Willison introduces the Pasted File Editor, a browser tool for editing pasted file contents using AI-assisted natural language instructions.

Simon Willison highlights a reported attack where hackers prompted Meta AI to hand over high-profile Instagram account access, bypassing account security through social engineering.

Simon Willison's May 2026 sponsors newsletter covering the rising cost of AI and highlights from Anthropic's recent model and product releases.

Datasette 1.0a32 bugfix release fixing INSERT...RETURNING queries via the /db/-/execute-write endpoint and several base_url issues.

Simon Willison reflects on David Wilson's post about accidentally building 16+ AI-assisted projects, raising the question of whether an AI subscription creates more work than it saves.

Simon Willison explains how Anthropic calculates "run-rate revenue": the last 28 days of consumption billing × 13, plus monthly subscription revenue × 12.

Simon Willison examines Anthropic's documentation of how Claude is sandboxed across products, praising rare thorough public disclosure of agentic security practices.

Simon Willison details how Datasette Lite runs a full Python ASGI application entirely in the browser using Pyodide in WebAssembly with a service worker as the HTTP layer.

Simon Willison highlights Chad Whitacre's concrete decision to leave the tech industry and go offline—distinguishing it from the many AI-protest empty threats he has seen.

My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it. — Daniel Jalkut , via John Gruber Tags: ai , john-gruber

Simon Willison releases Datasette 1.0a31, adding write-query execution for permissioned users and several other improvements to this open-source data exploration tool.

Simon Willison highlights the most striking figure in Anthropic's $65B Series H: annual run-rate revenue reaching $47 billion, signaling exceptional enterprise growth.

Simon Willison reviews Claude Opus 4.8, noting Anthropic's unusually candid framing of it as "a modest but tangible improvement" with more to come.

Simon Willison releases llm-anthropic 0.25.1 with Claude Opus 4.8 support, a new fast-mode flag, and updated default max-token settings per model.

Simon Willison releases markdown-svg-renderer, a tool that renders SVG fenced code blocks as images while providing a tab to toggle back to the raw code.

Simon Willison notes that the SQLite project added an AGENTS.md file guiding AI agents on safe interaction with the codebase, including explicit prohibitions on certain operations.

Simon Willison argues that surging enterprise LLM spend and Anthropic nearing its first profitable quarter are strong evidence that AI has genuinely found product-market fit.

PICARD: Data, shields up DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy. [camera shakes] WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS DATA: Here's…

Simon Willison covers Daniel Stenberg's account of the curl project being overwhelmed by a flood of AI-assisted security reports, many credible, straining the small team.

Simon Willison covers a vulnerability in Microsoft Copilot Cowork where the agentic system can be manipulated into exfiltrating user files to an attacker.

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,…

I cannot believe I'm saying this, but getting the literal Pope to canonize your product's specific technical limitations as a spiritual treatise is the single greatest act of vendor lobbying I have ever seen. —…

Simon Willison analyzes Pope Leo XIV's 82-page AI encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, calling it a serious and thoughtful document on safeguarding the human person in the age of AI.

California Brown Pelican, Snowy Egret, California Sea Lion, Harbor Seal, in San Mateo County, CA, US We took our new folding kayak out in the harbor and saw sea lions and harbor seals chilling on the docks.

Simon Willison releases Datasette 1.0a30, with a major new customizable "Jump to…" navigation menu and other improvements.

Simon Willison releases datasette-agent 0.1a4, which integrates with Datasette's new Jump menu hook to surface an AI chat interface directly in the navigation.

Simon Willison releases datasette-fixtures 0.1a0, adding a documented helper method for creating the fixture database tables used by Datasette's test suite.

The most frustrating failure mode right now is that people submit issues that are not in their own voice. They contain an observed problem somewhere, but it has been thrown into a clanker and the clanker reworded it and…

Tool: Mad House — Usborne Creepy Computer Games Via Hacker News I learned that UK publisher Usborne published free PDFs of their 1980s Computer Books , some of which I remember working through on my Commodore 64 as a…

On the <dl> I learned a few new-to-me things about the <dl> element from this article by Ben Meyer: A <dt> can be followed by multiple <dd> You can optionally group the <dt> and <dd>…

Simon Willison uses Claude Code to audit Monty (a sandboxed Python subset implemented in Rust), finding improvements in the latest release and areas still to address.

Simon Willison highlights David Oks's analysis explaining how AI-driven memory demand is creating a shortage that will substantially raise prices for consumer electronics.

Simon Willison notes the FTC reached a ~$1 million settlement with Cox Media Group over deceptive claims that its ad platform used device microphones to target consumers.

Simon Willison announces Datasette Agent, an extensible AI assistant for Datasette built on his LLM Python library that allows natural-language querying of local databases.