The Archive

Simon Willison's October sponsors-only newsletter covering game dev, LLM releases, and software updates.

Simon Willison analyzes how U.S. Executive Order 14434 on superintelligence affected Census Bureau's AI adoption survey and public data availability.

Simon Willison documents Python 3.15 dependency resolution workaround: deleting uv.lock files to fix wheel compatibility issues.

Simon Willison argues Claude Opus 5.5 reliability now enables viable AI-assisted indie game development.

Simon Willison releases Seam Cutter, a niche image cropping tool for removing sections from stitched screenshots.

Simon Willison demonstrates a Claude Opus 5.5 artifact that animates photo-to-painting conversion using canvas and simulated brushstrokes.

Simon Willison notes a French steampunk reskin of Battle Drones, an open-source RTS game released under Apache 2.0.

Simon Willison built Battle Drones, an RTS game using Claude prompting and audio-based multiplayer sync via vibe coding.

Simon Willison reflects on how coding agents may disrupt traditional programmer employment by automating logic-puzzle work that defined the profession's appeal and compensation.

Simon Willison releases web-edit 0.1a2 with clipboard copy for text/image, used for prompt logging workflows.

Simon Willison implements SPARQL 1.1 query support as a SQLite extension in Rust, demonstrating Claude Code's dynamic workflow capabilities.

Simon Willison built Chirp Pong, a two-player game using audio-based networking via Web Microphone API with Claude Opus 5.5.

Simon Willison builds a Three.js game using Claude Opus 5.5 Max to generate and compare procedural trees via extended reasoning.

Simon Willison demonstrates Python 3.15 profiling tools (flame graphs, heatmaps) on a web-edit app using GPT-6 Astra for code generation.

Simon Willison releases web-edit 0.1a0, a Python web UI for remote file editing over Tailscale, built with GPT assistance.

Simon Willison built a blog feature using ChatGPT voice mode in local development, demonstrating hands-free coding via conversational AI.

ttok 1.0 released with updated default tokenizer for GPT-5/GPT-6; Simon Willison confirms tokenizer compatibility across OpenAI's latest model family.

Simon Willison releases ttok 0.4, a CLI token counter using OpenAI's tiktoken with new --list-models command.

Simon Willison releases llm-openai-decisions plugin enabling programmatic access to OpenAI's new Decisions API with structured output support.

Simon Willison praises EmbeddingGemma 2's Apache 2.0 license, arguing open-weight embedding models reduce vendor lock-in risk for production deployments.

Simon Willison demonstrates integrating Parseable observability platform with Datasette's OpenTelemetry trace support via a working example.

Simon Willison comments on Mistral Large 4 benchmarking saturation with a humorous comparative prompt test across frontier models.

Simon Willison experiments with Claude Opus 5.5's music composition via a text-based format artifact, achieving Monkey Island-quality output.

Simon Willison replicates Colin Frasier's experiment testing Qwen 3.8 27B and GPT models on arithmetic tasks (sum-in-words), finding systematic errors across model scales.

Simon Willison argues AI agent deployments require hard budget caps on API spend, not soft warnings, to prevent runaway costs.

Simon Willison's September sponsors-only newsletter covers Fable models, LLM pricing competition, and mathematical capabilities.

Simon Willison documents a novelty dinosaur-operated newsstand in Brooklyn's Prospect Park subway station.

Simon Willison releases pwasm 0.2a0, a pure Python WebAssembly engine improved via Claude Opus 5.5 code generation.

Simon Willison visits NYC Museum exhibition of Joe Macken's 50x27ft architectural model.

Simon Willison's brief commentary on GPT-6.1 Sol pricing vs. performance; notes similarity to GPT-6 family in capability visualization.