Top all-time · #1641
Simon Willison
Personal blog · tools.simonwillison.netaiprogramming
Simon Willison's personal blog at tools.simonwillison.net covers ai and programming. Since 2024, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 284 times, most often “Tools.simonwillison.net”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Tools.simonwillison.net13 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2024-11-10
- Hacker News, Filtered4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-07-15
- LLM Cliché Highlighter4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-07-18
- 105 Vibe-Coded Tools3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-03-20
- /3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-07-07
- Claude Token Counter2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-11-09
- /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Ff789d2784fc6c5b870cc80f0b7cd9d012 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-04
- /hacker-news-histogram2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-05
- /micropython2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-06
- /markdown-svg-renderer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-25
What Hacker News says?
It looks like I misinterpreted the bottom of this page[0] where it says: > A seaside scene: a white pelican in a blue helmet pedals a red bicycle along the beach, one wing gripping the handlebar, its big orange beak and pouch out front, webbed feet on the pedals, and a fish tucked in the front basket for later. I thought that was the prompt from how it was worded. I guess it's part of the response. [0] https://tools…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F17318f748f8c2b476051ddc2ebeb94a7
on “GPT-6 Astra”Submitted LLM Cliché Highlighter as a story · 27 points
HN discussionI finally got access. Here are the pelicans! https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... The "max" one at the bottom took 4 minutes 2 seconds and cost 63.206 cents. For comparison, here those new Astra pelicans are in a grid with the GPT-5.6 pelicans: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p...
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Ff789d2784fc6c5b870cc80f0b7cd9d01
on “GPT-6 Astra”Submitted 105 Vibe-Coded Tools as a story · 25 points
HN discussionMy automation is pretty simple. I use my https://llm.datasette.io tool where I have a template saved: llm "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle" --save pelican When a model comes out I first make sure LLM can talk to it - usually by updating the relevant plugin, but if it's on OpenRouter I can use it directly with https://github.com/simonw/llm-openrouter - sometimes I use this mechanism instead, for OpenAI-…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer
on “GPT-6 Astra”Submitted MDN Browser Support Timelines as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI think it's curious that it has so many shared elements with the latest Astra pelicans: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... - Sun on top right - Cloud on top left - Three "speed lines" - Two feathers on top of the head - Eye rendered as a black circle with smaller white circle inside I wonder if the pelican benchmark is converging across models due to past results being used in training.
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Ff789d2784fc6c5b870cc80f0b7cd9d01
on “Mistral Large 4”Submitted Sorting Algorithms as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> The benchmark is saturated. Frontier models are tested with an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars. OK well I couldn't resist this one: llm -m claude-opus-5.5 'Generate an SVG of an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars' llm -m gpt-6.1-sol 'Generate an SVG of an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars' llm -m gemini-3.8-flash 'Generate an SVG of an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F18c9f7fc3b3705cf88514cb9170ec246
on “Mistral Large 4”Submitted Hacker News, Filtered as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSurprisingly it only supports reasoning "none" or reasoning "high". That setting didn't seem to make any real difference - it added a tiny bit of thinking trace and high actually produced less output tokens than none. The high bicycle frame is better then the none one though. Pelicans: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... (Definitely the best I've seen from any Mistral model: https://simon…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F0db8b8196e57711b352f6c5857cf5b35
on “Mistral Large 4”Submitted Tools.simonwillison.net as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt is interesting that Fable 5.1 max [1] which also produced a decent pelican with 65k output tokens compared to 5.5 running out of 128k output tokens tells us something about the new models token usage propensity despite this being a sample of 1. Fable 5.1 27 input, 65,927 output Opus 5.5 27 input, 128,000 output (128k thinking tokens) - incomplete [1] https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Facf6ab2516527d97f04b9f07d61a7cad
on “Claude Opus 5.5”Submitted Claude Token Counter as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere are pelicans for thinking levels low, medium, high, and xhigh: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... All four levels have a correctly shaped bicycle frame. The differences between the pelicans aren't huge, but the xhigh one has a better beak. I haven't managed to get one for level "max" yet, it hit the limit of 128,000 cap for output tokens while it was still reasoning about the questi…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F61fd7c3683fffce9a3ab7c43d1180024
on “Claude Opus 5.5”Submitted Scrimshaw Jukebox as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGPT-6 Luna being half the price of GPT-5.6 Luna is a really big deal. Here's GPT-6 Luna pelicans: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... And GPT-6 Sol: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... Scroll to the bottom for the GPT-6 Sol max one: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... For comparison, here are the pelicans I got for GPT-6 Astra: https…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Ff789d2784fc6c5b870cc80f0b7cd9d01
on “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”Submitted Shadow roots, explained with live examples as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou didn't checkmate anything. You're perfectly capable of looking at the world around you. You're arguing in bad faith using a false dichotomy that I must be able to produce examples or my argument is not valid. You're trying to suck all the air out of the room and waste time. https://tools.simonwillison.net/ ChECk MaTee
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on “LLM Inevitabilism”Submitted LLM Cliche Highlighter as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…
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on “LLM Inevitabilism”Submitted Sorting Algorithms as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThanks for the benefit of the doubt. I typed that in a hurry, and it didn’t come out the way I intended. We had the idea that there’s a class of apps [1] that could really benefit from our tooling - mainly Fireproof, our local-first database, along with embedded LLM calling and image generation support. The app itself is open source, and the hosted version is free. Initially, there was no login or signup - you could…
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on “Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]”Submitted GeoJSON Map Viewer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes. I've been doing a bunch of 3D experiments with recent models, you can check the session logs and see if they've retrieved anything. They're building the 3D models directly in code. I even built an environment that allows execution of Python code to render with Blender but allows no other interactions (including networking, I sandbox that off). They can create good 3D models just fine - here's a Faberge Egg by G…
Comment linking /blender-viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.simonwillison.net%2Fstatic%2Fcors-allow%2F2026%2Fgemini-4-astra-egg.blend
on “Gemini 4 Argon”Submitted LLM Cliché Highlighter as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've been dismissive of the SVG-of-pelicans benchmark, but last night ChatGPT (on the website, toggle set to GPT-6 High) generated some SVGs and included them in our chat. I'm not sure that this feature was that valuable in this case, but it seems that textually generating SVGs is now a product feature at least for ChatGPT. The SVGs had some clear issues and I found myself wishing that it had done a better job: the…
Comment linking /svg-render
on “Gemini 4 Argon”If a result is suspiciously good I run a spot check with one of my many other SVG things. Here's 'Generate an SVG of an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars' for Gemini 4 Argon: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... Some other models for comparison: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F18c9f7fc3b3705cf88514cb9170ec246
on “Gemini 4 Argon”Unsurprisingly, the pelicans are excellent. Google are the only lab who have publicly shared that they have specifically trained for SVG output - https://twitter.com/sunjiao123sun_/status/202455551655137292... - and they've had great pelican results in the past too (which they have shown off themselves - https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/2024525132266688757 ). Here's low, medium, high. Even low is better than peli…
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Fd741e4420dea14c460f0108ac22dbc26
on “Gemini 4 Argon”For the transcripts I shares above I'm using my https://llm.datasette.io/ tool - it has the ability to export logs to markdown: llm logs -cue > transcript.md Then I paste that into a Gist, then paste the Gist URL into https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer
Comment linking /markdown-svg-renderer
on “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1”
