Independent AI researcher, creator of datasette.io and llm.datasette.io, building open source tools for data journalism, writing about a lot of stuff at https://simonwillison.net/https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.nethttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlp3eosabk2lThis "Unethical Guide to Surviving AI Layoffs" by Mo Bitar perfectly captures the current moment https://www.tiktok.com/@atmoio/video/763864982538219035013 May 2026 00:48 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlp3eosabk2lhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlms5alufs2e"old woman possibly damp faster than an old woman should be"12 May 2026 02:57 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlms5alufs2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlmj6umalc2rWrote about today's GitLab restructuring / "workforce reduction" announcement, and ended up digging around in version control for both the GitLab and the 37signals public employee handbooks to help illustrate my thoughts https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/11/gitlab-act-2/12 May 2026 00:17 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlmj6umalc2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mllxsz32422qNew 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 - https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/llm-shebang11 May 2026 19:06 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mllxsz32422qhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mllkcpjq7c2sThis is excellent. I particularly like the definition of the "Zombie Internet", which starts: "It’s people talking to bots, people talking to people, people creating “AI agents” and then instructing them to interact with people. It’s people using AI talking to people who are not using AI [...]" [contains quote post or other embedded content]11 May 2026 15:04 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mllkcpjq7c2shttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlfg7qnaq22rMission accomplished: tap danced in the big community college dance recital for the second time09 May 2026 04:35 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlfg7qnaq22rhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlecjzhefs2iJust realized that the reason I like TikTok so much is that it's lightning talks! I've always loved lightning talks08 May 2026 17:57 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlecjzhefs2ihttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mlbpmp4udc2lUnder-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 https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/7/xai-anthropic/07 May 2026 17:13 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlbpmp4udc2lhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3ml732s52h22vI'm at the Claude w/ Code event in San Francisco, and I'll be live blogging the keynote here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/6/code-w-claude-2026/06 May 2026 15:59 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml732s52h22vhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3ml6xlk4ams22I was talking with Joseph Ruscio on the @heavybit.com podcast the other day when I realized that vibe coding and agentic engineering have started to blur a bit in some of my work - I published some extracts from the transcript https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/6/vibe-coding-and-agentic-engineering/06 May 2026 14:57 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml6xlk4ams22https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3ml57nzilrs2zAI-run business experiments are interesting and fun up to the point where they waste the time of humans who haven't opted into the experiments - I think they need to keep their own human operators in the loop for outbound actions that affect other people https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/5/our-ai-started-a-cafe-in-stockholm/05 May 2026 22:17 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml57nzilrs2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3ml2ugm6pok2xI tried running the same "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle" prompt against 21 different quantized variants of the same IBM Granite 4.1 3B model - the results weren't as interesting as I had hoped https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/4/granite-41-3b-svg-pelican-gallery/04 May 2026 23:50 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml2ugm6pok2xhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkxjblgepc2lThe AI auto-reply bots from Twitter (fun fact, the software category is genuinely called "reply guy" tools) have started showing up on Bluesky now and it really, really sucks03 May 2026 15:53 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkxjblgepc2lhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkv67ast5c2eI added a new feature to my blog (built entirely on my phone with Claude code for web) that imports my iNaturalist photos and adds them to my site's overall timeline https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/2/sightings/02 May 2026 17:29 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkv67ast5c2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkq4u3i5n22rSaw this white-crowned sparrow having a lot of a sing30 Apr 2026 17:22 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkq4u3i5n22rhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkohhvx6fs22The Zig project's rationale for their blanket ban on AI-assisted contributions makes a lot of sense to me - for them, time spent reviewing PRs isn't about the code, it's about growing new contributors for the future of the project https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/30/zig-anti-ai/30 Apr 2026 01:26 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkohhvx6fs22https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mknsn2l6us2aI 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 https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/29/llm/29 Apr 2026 19:13 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mknsn2l6us2ahttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkkpavnduc2sI would very much like to see the 2,000 lb stellar sea lion at San Francisco Pier 39, who I believe has now been named "Chonkers" Does anyone know if he keeps a regular schedule?28 Apr 2026 13:35 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkkpavnduc2shttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkjl5mwpsk2hSome notes on talkie, a new "vintage language model" from a team including Alec Radford (yes, that Alec Radford) "trained on 260B tokens of historical pre-1931 English text" https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/28/talkie/28 Apr 2026 02:49 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkjl5mwpsk2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkjblmouzc2pLove this so much (Also definitive proof that humans are so much better than machines) [contains quote post or other embedded content]27 Apr 2026 23:58 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkjblmouzc2phttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkjb3t2mhk2zMicrosoft's MIT licensed VibeVoice speech-to-text model (think Whisper with speaker diarization) is really good - my notes on running the 5.71GB 4bit MLX conversion on an M5 MacBook, using about 60GB of RAM at peak and transcribing 1hr of audio in ~9 mins https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/27/vibevoice/27 Apr 2026 23:49 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkjb3t2mhk2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkiprvdfv22bToday OpenAI announced that "Revenue share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft continue through 2030, independent of OpenAI’s technology progress" That "independent of OpenAI’s technology progress" fragment appears to mean that the weird AGI clause is now deceased https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/27/now-deceased-agi-clause/27 Apr 2026 18:39 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkiprvdfv22bhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkdikalmcs2uI think ChatGPT Images 2.0 deciding to add a "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS" sign to the background of this image is the first time I've felt a glimpse of AGI https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/25/why-are-you-like-this/25 Apr 2026 16:46 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkdikalmcs2uhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkb5frxhf22kI had no idea The Wind in the Willows was this much of a banger [contains quote post or other embedded content]24 Apr 2026 18:22 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkb5frxhf22khttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mkarjdp4ys2jOK this piece by @reckless.bsky.social about why AI is unpopular among most people (anyone who's not inflicted with "software brain") is just solid gold from start to finish [contains quote post or other embedded content]24 Apr 2026 14:49 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkarjdp4ys2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mk7ud6p4f22nDeepSeek V4 just dropped - two models, Flash and Pro, both benchmarking well, decent pelicans and prices that put them both as the cheapest in their respective categories by a solid margin https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/24/deepseek-v4/24 Apr 2026 06:06 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mk7ud6p4f22nhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mk7nmiht422nThis week's edition of my email newsletter features 4 pelicans riding bicycles, 1 possum on an e-scooter, up to 5 raccoons with ham radios hiding in crowds, 5 blog posts, 8 links, 3 quotes and a new chapter of my Agentic Engineering Patterns guide https://simonw.substack.com/p/gpt-55-chatgpt-images-20-qwen36-27b24 Apr 2026 04:06 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mk7nmiht422nhttps://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3mk6znzgmc22iI vibe coded a web UI to LiteParse by LlamaIndex, a neat open source library for extracting text from annoying layouts PDFs simonw.github.io/liteparse/ More about how I built it on my blog: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/23/liteparse-for-the-web/23 Apr 2026 22:09 +0000at://did:plc:kft6lu4trxowqmter2b6vg6z/app.bsky.feed.post/3mk6znzgmc22i