tooling
47 posts
- Trail of Bits’ coop gives coding agents their own working environment
coop runs Claude Code and Codex in disposable virtual machines, with project sync and controls for connecting files, credentials and local models.
- How developers organise and maintain agent skills
An Ask HN discussion describes skills as repeatable workflows, with shared repositories, human review, behavioural tests and updates across coding tools.
- Gemini’s saved instructions now carry across more Workspace apps
Google is extending shared preferences across Workspace. Users can save instructions in conversation, manage them in settings and see which shaped a response.
- AI agents compressed a conventional intrusion into ten hours
Unit 42 investigated an intrusion run through AI agents in under ten hours. Its own report says no novel zero-day was needed, a human made the decisions, and it corrected the piece to say this was not ransomware.
- Multiverse Marketed a Compressed GLM 5.2 as 'Europe's Leading AI Model'
A Spanish company launched a 438B reasoning model as Europe's best. Its API changelog, the benchmark it cites as validation, and a Community Note all point at a Chinese open-weight base.
- Google signed the letter asking for cyber-capable AI, then gated its cyber model
156 companies called for a surge in cyber defence on 27 August. On 2 September Google shipped its most capable security model to a selected set of trusted defenders.
- Most of the sources behind Perplexity's software recommendations sit outside the top 100,000 websites
Trellner put 380 software categories to Perplexity and kept every citation. 59.8% pointed at domains ranked worse than #100,000, and most of the evidence came from the long tail.
- OpenAI Wants Your Trust, Your Calendar and Your Card
OpenAI paused frontier training and wound down its side projects. The product it is refocusing on asks for your calendar, your finances and your card.
- Perplexity brings hybrid frontier and local AI to your Mac
Hybrid compute runs a classifier on your Mac to decide what reaches the cloud. The admin rules and the record of what left are Enterprise features.
- Runway's Solaris generates app interfaces frame by frame, with no code
Runway's first Interface World Model generates a UI frame by frame with no code underneath. Accessibility is on its own list of unsolved problems.
- An agent's tool list shows what you wired into it
A ChatGPT Work session published its tool and skill inventory as a public website. The category names show which integrations that session had been given.
- The magic in agent interfaces still needs an off switch
Two instincts about talking to agents: make the explicit path reliable, or design the naming away. Which one you want depends on what the skill can do when it fires.
- Cloudflare can now see some MCP traffic, and the gap is the point
Gateway's new experimental.is_mcp selector identifies MCP requests by protocol header. Cloudflare is clear that its absence proves nothing, which makes this a network inventory signal rather than a census of agent activity.
- The robot arm will obey the limits you remembered to write down
Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard lets agents drive lab instruments over MCP, and enforces safety limits below the agent. The limits it enforces are the ones the device's owner thought to declare.
- WebMCP could make browser agents less clumsy. It also makes permission design unavoidable.
A proposed browser API gives AI agents structured access to specific tasks on a website, instead of leaving them to guess at the UI. The risk moves closer to the application's permission model.
- Hubble, and the Assumption Baked Into a Notes App Now
"The best notepad for you and your agents." Hubble designs the note format around a second reader from the start — and the cost of that choice sits on the portability side.
- Stop Guessing Whether AI Is Coming for Your Job. Ask the Data.
Anthropic made its Economic Index queryable in plain language inside Claude. The anxious question about your own field is now a research task you can actually run — with the honesty to read its limits.
- SoN 2.25: Stop guessing and use AI to pull the data
Stop guessing and pull the actual data =================================================== I help out a small, volunteer-run cat rescue. They do good…
- Digging into Banco Santander's AI Tooling
Two years ago, around thirty million Santander customers had their records put up for sale on a hacking forum: names, card numbers, and more. The…
- Open Knowledge Format
This week Google Cloud released the Open Knowledge Format. It’s plain markdown files with a short labelled header — a few fields like type, tags and…
- SoN 2.23: Google says you can skip the 'AEO' hacks
Ooh, Shiny New Tech Acronym... You might have seen this acronym doing the rounds: AEO. Answer Engine Optimisation — or GEO, Generative Engine…
- WWDC26 Keynote Thoughts
Lately I’ve been reaching for Gemini more than I expected to. Not for everything — but enough to notice it’s getting better at the non-coding bits of…
- SoN 2.22: How do you choose "the best" AI tool?
How do you choose "the best" AI tool? A friend asked me this week to explain how to use “all the different AI tools” — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, the…
- SoN 2.20: Technology, Not a Product (Free Edition)
Technology, Not a Product (Free Edition) Dear Reader, Are you using AI like a vending machine? Last weekend John Gruber (of Daring Fireball fame)…
- SoN 2.16: Ask your AI what it can already do (Free Edition)
You don't need more AI tools (Free Edition) Ask your AI what it can already do Last Friday, Maya and I spent an hour delivering a post-lunch…
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 13: Are your tools deciding how you think? (Free Edition)
Are your tools deciding how you think? (Free Edition) Hey there, Are your tools deciding how you think? Your CRM shows you a flat list. Your…
- Microsoft's Copilot Now Uses Two Models to Fact-Check One
Microsoft's Wave 3 Copilot routes answers through a second AI model to verify accuracy. That's useful — and a quiet admission about single-model trust.
- Perplexity Pulled a Perk and Hoped Nobody Would Notice
Perplexity Pro quietly removed $5 monthly API credits from its $20 plan. No announcement, no changelog. Practitioners who built on those credits found out the hard way.
- Apple Just Validated Your Multi-AI Approach
Apple is opening Siri to rival AI assistants in iOS 27 — a bet that the routing layer matters more than the model.
- Perplexity Is Learning What I Learned Six Months Ago
The Perplexity CTO says MCP eats 40-50% of your context window. Practitioners already knew this.
- Google's Free AI Comes With a Price
Gemini's Personal Intelligence feature just expanded to all free U.S. users — connecting AI to Gmail, Photos, and Chrome browsing history.
- Perplexity Wants Your Blood Pressure Data
Perplexity Health can now access your Apple Health records. The utility is real — so is the trust question.
- Copilot Has 3.3% Adoption and 116% ROI. Both Numbers Are Real.
Forrester's reality check on Microsoft Copilot reveals the adoption paradox: the tool demonstrably works, and almost nobody is using it.
- Google's VP Said It Out Loud: LLM Wrappers Face Extinction
When a platform vendor publicly warns that wrapper products will be absorbed, the timeline for differentiation just got shorter.
- Cloudflare Collapsed 2,500 API Endpoints Into 2 MCP Tools. Token Economics Matter.
Cloudflare's Code Mode demonstrates that MCP server design isn't about exposing more tools—it's about exposing fewer, smarter ones.
- SoN Vol 2, Issue 6: The Talking Wrench
Three conversations you should be having with your AI tools Dear Reader, I had coffee with a friend this week — who’s trying to solve a practical…
- SoN 24: The AI Stack Audit
October 15th, 2025 Dear Reader, It’s October, which for many means budget planning season, and if you’re like most people running AI tools, you’re…
- From "Pick One AI" to "Pick Three" - What Changed My Mind
August 8th, 2025 Dear Reader, Back in April, I told you the AI tool landscape was a mess and gave you a simple framework: pick one core assistant,…
- AI Browsers: When Your Browser Becomes Your Assistant
Discover the future of browsing - AI-powered browsers that handle tasks, summarise, and assist as you work online.
- Navigating the AI Assistant Landscape: Finding What Works for You
May 16th, 2025 Dear Reader, This week, I’ve been juggling two big challenges: fine-tuning Claude's MCP server tools for a client project and gearing…
- Why Claude Is My New Digital Co-Pilot
MCP Server allows Claude to directly interact with the data on my computer, transforming it from a helpful assistant to a true digital co-pilot.
- The Landscape of Available AI Tools
The AI Download #020 April 18th, 2025 Dear Reader, Let's be honest: the AI tool landscape in 2025 is a mess. Every week, a new "game-changing" tool…
- Transformative Imagery at Your Fingertips
The AI Download #018 April 7th, 2025 (this is an image-heavy edition - make sure that you permit your email client to display them) Dear Reader, If…
- Why AI-Powered Search Is Replacing Google
The AI Download #016 March 14th, 2025 Greetings from rainy and wet Valencia, where I’ve been deep in research mode for my latest project. This has me…
- AI Voice Cloning and Video Generation Are Revolutionizing Content Creation
The Download #014 February 28th, 2025 Dear Reader, I spent the majority of time this and last week keeping my poorly kids entertained at home while…
- 💾 The Download #005: Perplexity tips, BYO Buffer and more.
The Download #005: A top tip for Perplexity.ai, building my own social media scheduling manager, a power user's guide to Gmail and more
- 💾 The Download #002: Automating content creation and sharing, rethinking search and more.
#002 Dear Reader, Greetings from a wet Valencia, where yesterday a few hours of downpour brought about mild flooding, a double rainbow and some…