Simon Willison — 2026-05-06#

Highlight#

The highlight of today is Simon’s candid reflection on how highly reliable coding tools like Claude Code are blurring the line between professional “agentic engineering” and hands-off “vibe coding”. He raises important questions about accountability, the loss of traditional software evaluation metrics, and how the bottlenecks of the entire software development lifecycle are radically shifting.

Posts#

Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I’d like Simon expands on a recent podcast conversation to discuss how he is increasingly treating AI agents like Claude Code as semi-black boxes, trusting them to write unreviewed production code. He notes that because AI can generate comprehensive tests and beautiful readmes in minutes, traditional signals of software quality are losing their value, making actual usage the most important metric. Furthermore, he observes that as coding speeds up exponentially, upstream bottlenecks like cautious, extensive design processes are being fundamentally challenged. Despite these shifts, he isn’t worried about the future of software engineering careers, emphasizing that these tools are simply amplifiers for a discipline that remains fiercely difficult.

Live blog: Code w/ Claude 2026 A brief post announcing that Simon is attending Anthropic’s Code w/ Claude event in 2026. He mentions that he will be live-blogging the keynote and providing notes throughout the day.

Project Pulse#

Today’s updates center entirely around the evolving landscape of AI-assisted coding and Anthropic’s Claude ecosystem, looking both at the philosophical impact of the tools and live updates directly from their creator.