Week 21 Summary

Blogs, AI, Tech

Datasette, Llm, Css, Openclaw, Git, Open Source, Security, AI, Gov-Uk, Birds, Birdwatching, Los Angeles, Pycon Us, Llms, Gemini, Local Llms, Coding-Agents, Llm-Pricing, Generative-Ai, Prompt-Injection, Sqlite, Sandboxing, Artificial Intelligence, Privacy, Memory, Advertising

Simon Willison — Week of 2026-05-16 to 2026-05-22#

Highlight of the Week#

The most impactful milestone this week is the official announcement of Datasette Agent, merging Simon’s three years of work on his LLM library directly into Datasette. This conversational AI interface allows users to naturally interrogate their databases, boasting an extensible plugin architecture for charts, image generation, and secure code execution.

Key Posts#

[The last six months in LLMs in five minutes] · Source Simon shared annotated slides from his PyCon US 2026 lightning talk capturing a major inflection point in AI developer tooling. He highlights how coding agents crossed the threshold to become reliable daily drivers, and points to the astonishing capabilities of massive local models running on consumer hardware like Mac Minis.

2026-05-17

Blogs, AI, Tech

Open Source, Security, AI, Gov-Uk

Simon Willison — 2026-05-17#

Highlight#

The NHS recently decided to close its open-source repositories in response to AI-discovered vulnerabilities, but the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) is publicly pushing back. Simon highlights this rare public clash between UK civil service branches over the critical issue of AI security and open-source by-default policies.

Posts#

GDS weighs in on the NHS’s decision to retreat from Open Source · Source Simon points to Terence Eden’s continued coverage of the NHS’s poorly considered decision to lock down access to open-source repositories following vulnerabilities flagged by Project Glasswing. The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) has stepped in with a new publication on AI and open code, strongly recommending that public sector code remain “open by default” because closing everything adds delivery costs and reduces both code reuse and scrutiny. Terence Eden observes that this public disagreement—described as a frosty “meeting without biscuits”—represents a major escalation within the civil service over how to handle open-source security in the age of AI.