Simon Willison — 2026-06-28#

Highlight#

The standout thought today is a philosophical shift on AI-assisted programming via Jon Udell, challenging the phrase “human in the loop”. It’s a crucial perspective for developers—framing autonomous tools as “agents in our loop” rather than black boxes, ensuring we maintain our engineering authority.

Posts#

Quoting Jon Udell Simon highlights a thought-provoking quote from Jon Udell about how we frame AI-assisted development. Udell pushes back against the standard “human in the loop” terminology, arguing that it inherently surrenders authority to the machine. Instead, he advocates for an “agent in the loop” approach where developers maintain their standard workflows and simply invite agentic software in to assist. It is a necessary reminder to treat generative AI as a tool that serves the engineering team, rather than an unreviewable black box that just takes prompts and emits features.

Hack Your Summer Simon shares an initiative he learned about from DJ Patil called “Hack Your Summer,” aimed at helping undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent grads build real, public-facing projects. The four-week high-velocity sprint was created as a direct response to this year’s internship crisis, offering a practical alternative for early-career developers who missed out on scarce placements as companies scaled back hiring. The program teaches participants how to make steady progress with peer and mentor support, and they are currently seeking volunteers to help coach the next cohort starting July 13th.

Project Pulse#

Today’s posts step back from raw code and CLI releases to focus on the human dynamics of software engineering. The common thread is how people fit into the process—whether that means rethinking how experienced engineers integrate autonomous coding agents into their teams, or how the community is stepping up to mentor the next generation through a tough internship market.