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# AI Dev Essentials - Issue #22

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **22nd issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

This past week I actually spent some time stargazing in Bryce Canyon with my beautiful wife. It honestly felt amazing to step away from the noise of the world and appreciate the beauty of the Universe. When I got back home, I sat down to focus on planning out a Claude Code intro course which I'll be releasing on egghead.io for free. This will essentially serve as a prerequisite course for people who are planning to attend my Claude Code Power User Workshop. I'm starting recording today and hopefully you'll have something to share next week.

Sign up for the next workshop here: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Projects to Free Users

**OpenAI has made ChatGPT Projects available to all free users globally, following their pattern of gradually expanding paid features to broader audiences.**

Key features for free users:
- **Project organization**: Create unlimited projects for organizing conversations by topic
- **Enhanced file uploads**: Up to 5 files per project (vs. 25 for Plus, 40 for Pro)
- **Custom project icons**: Choose colors and icons for better organization
- **Project-only memory**: Separate memory contexts for each project
- **Cross-platform access**: Available on web and Android app, with iOS rollout coming soon

This represents a major democratization of ChatGPT's advanced features, previously exclusive to paid tiers.

([OpenAI Help Center](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-using-projects-in-chatgpt), [Engadget](https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rolls-out-chatgpt-projects-to-free-users-215027802.html))

> *I love the fact that the memory will be separate from other projects. One of the biggest pain points of using ChatGPT is memory leaking from one thing to another. In one chat I might be talking about an Electron app, and in another I might be talking about a Tauri app and the suggested solutions would obviously be for the wrong technology. Really happy to see these siloed separations taking place.*

### Google Intensifies AI Chip Competition Through Strategic TPU Expansion

**Google has escalated its competition with NVIDIA by approaching smaller cloud providers to host TPUs in their data centers, striking deals with providers like London-based Fluidstack.**

Strategic developments:
- **TPU v5p Performance**: 2.8x faster at training large language models compared to TPU v4
- **Market Impact**: Google's TPU sales estimated at $6-9 billion in 2024, potentially reducing NVIDIA's market share for the first time
- **Next-Gen Trillium**: Sixth-generation TPUs promise 4x boost in training performance and 3x increase in inference throughput over TPU v5e
- **Distribution Strategy**: Partnering with smaller cloud providers to expand TPU availability beyond Google Cloud

This move represents Google's most aggressive challenge to NVIDIA's AI chip dominance to date.

([TrendForce](https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/09/04/news-google-reportedly-courts-smaller-csps-to-host-tpus-taking-aim-at-nvidia/), [Stock Titan](https://www.stocktitan.net/news/TTGT/omdia-demand-for-google-s-tpu-chips-accelerates-challenging-nvidia-s-587cj41w52lu.html))

> *NVIDIA needs the competition since they're absolutely dominating the AI chip market. The competition is good for the industry and for us as the end users. Hopefully this simply results in better products and better pricing for everyone.*

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### Zed Editor Integrates Claude Code via Agent Client Protocol

**Zed launched Claude Code integration in public beta through their Agent Client Protocol (ACP), bringing AI-powered coding directly into the high-performance editor.**

Integration features:
- **Native Claude Code support**: Full integration with existing Claude Code subscriptions
- **Agent Client Protocol**: Open standard specification for connecting any AI agent with any compatible editor
- **Performance optimization**: Maintains Zed's speed while adding AI capabilities
- **Multiple agent support**: Framework supports various AI agents simultaneously
- **Public beta**: Currently in beta testing phase for user feedback

The integration leverages Zed's performance advantages while providing access to Claude's coding capabilities.

([Zed's Official Blog](https://zed.dev/blog/claude-code-via-acp), [Agent Client Protocol GitHub](https://github.com/zed-industries/agent-client-protocol))

> *I always keep a close eye on Zed. And I know the performance versus convenience conversations are always difficult ones to have. I wouldn't call myself a Cursor fanboy by any means, but anytime I try another product, I just keep on coming back to it. It always feels like it's just a little something here or there that's missing that's already a major part of my workflow. But I'm cheering Zed on, and I hope that one day it's strong enough to pull me away. Claude Code integration is definitely a massive plus.*

### into.md Tool Simplifies Web Content Conversion

**The into.md tool converts any web page into clean, LLM-friendly markdown by simply prepending "into.md/" to any URL, created by Timo Lins.**

Tool capabilities:
- **Simple URL prefix**: Add "into.md/" before any URL to convert content
- **Clean markdown output**: Removes navigation, ads, and irrelevant content
- **LLM optimization**: Formatted specifically for AI processing
- **No signup required**: Works immediately without registration
- **Open tool**: Available for public use

This addresses the common need to feed web content to AI models in a clean, processable format.

([into.md Official Site](https://into.md/))

> *I love this new into.md tool because copying the content of a web page into an AI prompt is turning into a common everyday task that I pull off multiple times. I use a Chrome extension called Mark Snip for this most often. But I've run a few experiments with using into.md with curl or Node's fetch (make sure you respect redirects if you do that). And it's helped me brainstorm up some really interesting scenarios of websites as prompts that I'm looking forward to play more with.*

### Nano Banana Prompt Templates: Mastering Gemini 2.5 Flash Image

**A comprehensive guide to using Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) has emerged from the community, providing six essential prompt templates for maximizing image generation quality.**

Template categories:
- **Photorealistic Scenes**: Detailed photographer-like descriptions with camera angles, lighting, and mood specifications
- **Stylized Illustrations**: Creating specific design styles like kawaii icons and custom artwork  
- **Accurate Text Rendering**: Generating logos and designs with precise text integration
- **Product Mockups**: Professional commercial photography setups
- **Minimalist Design**: Negative space compositions for websites and presentations
- **Sequential Art**: Comic panel development and narrative visual scenes

The core principle emphasized throughout: "Describe the scene, don't just list keywords." Each template provides structured approaches with Python code examples for Gemini API integration.

> *I shamefully ripped this post off of x.com and saved it as a gist for much easier copy/paste into my prompts 🫣. Here's the original post: [https://x.com/GoogleAIStudio/status/1962957615262224511](https://x.com/GoogleAIStudio/status/1962957615262224511)*

([Nano Banana Prompt Templates Gist](https://gist.github.com/johnlindquist/a198cec161f2356cc9f64e15a675529b))


### Jules Agent Introduces Sample Prompts for New Users

**Google's Jules coding agent added sample prompts to the homepage on September 2, 2025, to help new users get started with AI-assisted development.**

New user experience improvements:
- **One-click examples**: Pre-built prompts demonstrate common use cases
- **Homepage integration**: Sample prompts displayed on Jules home page for all users
- **Single-click workflow**: Add prompts to input box with one click
- **Getting started guide**: Reduces barrier to entry for new users
- **Best practices**: Shows optimal ways to interact with the agent

This addresses one of the main barriers to AI agent adoption: not knowing how to get started effectively.

([Jules Official Changelog](https://jules.google/docs/changelog/), [Jules Documentation](https://jules.google/docs))

> *Jules is one of those tools where I feel like most people are aware of its existence. But all the various experiments and tools in the Google ecosystem seem so separate that it's hard to remember what does what. I use Google's AI Studio extensively and I use Gemini extensively. But then opening up another tab to use Jules or Stitch or Flow or many of the other AI experiments, which are all amazing, just seems like a weird context switching that I hope they integrate into either Gemini or AI Studio. Again, this isn't a knock on their team at all, it's just the story of switching or trying to follow all of Google's various projects is turning into a task in and of itself.*

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem Updates

### Anthropic Addresses Claude Opus Performance Issues

**Anthropic experienced significant Claude Opus performance degradation from August 25-28, 2025, affecting Claude Opus 4.1 and 4.0 models for approximately 56.5 hours.**

Technical details:
- **Inference stack rollout**: Problematic infrastructure update caused performance issues
- **Performance degradation**: Users reported "lower intelligence, malformed responses or issues with tool calling in Claude Code"
- **Root cause identified**: Infrastructure optimization attempts backfired
- **Resolution implemented**: Rollback to stable inference architecture
- **Duration**: 56.5-hour incident affecting multiple model versions

The transparency around infrastructure issues demonstrates Anthropic's commitment to user experience.

([Anthropic Status](https://status.anthropic.com/incidents/h26lykctfnsz), [Simon Willison's analysis](https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/30/claude-degraded-quality/))

> *I've seen many people commenting on issues with Claude Code over the past week. Whereas I was actually out of town for most of it, so I guess my timing was perfect. But it's always good to see providers own up to their mistakes and be more transparent with why people might be having bad experiences. I know how frustrating it can be to be working at a large company and trying to tell your manager that you're not making progress because your tools aren't working as expected.*

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Claude Artifacts Enable Interactive App Development
- **Interactive artifacts**: Build and share functional web applications directly in Claude
- **Cost-effective sharing**: Users pay for their own API usage, not creators
- **Real-time iteration**: Modify and improve apps through conversation with dedicated artifacts panel
- **Shareable links**: One-click sharing capability for published artifacts
- **General availability**: Available to all Claude.ai users across Free, Pro, and Team plans

([Anthropic Official Announcement](https://www.anthropic.com/news/artifacts), [Anthropic Help Center](https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11649438-prototype-ai-powered-apps-with-claude-artifacts))

### Backlog.md: Open-Source Task Management for Developers
- **Markdown-native**: Task manager and Kanban visualizer for Git repositories
- **Cross-platform**: Available on macOS, Linux, Windows with MIT licensing
- **AI-friendly**: Designed for collaboration between humans and AI agents
- **Developer workflow**: CLI and web interface with drag-and-drop functionality

([GitHub Repository](https://github.com/MrLesk/Backlog.md), [Hacker News Discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483530))

---

## ✨ Workshop Spotlight

**Claude Code Power User Workshop**

Ready to master advanced Claude Code workflows? Join the next power user workshop to learn professional automation patterns and advanced techniques.

Almost sold out! Grab your ticket before they're gone.

**Next session:** Friday, September 12, 2025
**Time:** 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)
**Platform:** Zoom
**🇪🇸 Europe-Friendly Time!** That's 1:00 PM in London, 2:00 PM in Paris & Berlin

Register: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

Read this far? Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend! - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

John Lindquist

AI Dev Essentials #22: ChatGPT Projects, Google’s TPU Push & Zed’s Claude Code

This issue covers key AI updates, including ChatGPT's free projects, Google's aggressive TPU expansion, and new developer tools like the Zed editor and into.md

# AI Dev Essentials - Issue #21

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **21st issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

Google just obliterated the competition with their release of the new Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model (which is affectionately referred to as "Nano Banana"). It's been so consistent and predictable that my kids love using it, my parents love using it, and it's just made image generation so much more fun thanks to the consistency and things you can do. My kids especially love taking stuffed animals and turning them into superheroes and then putting them into comic books. As a an automation nerd, I've been playing around with scripts to generate storyboards then converting the storyboards into videos. I've had decent luck with it and hope to be able to iron out the workflow. I decided to record a lesson about scripting Nano Banana following a similar process on egghead, which you can see below.

I've also been spending a lot more time with Claude Code on GitHub Actions. Now I can inject AI into any of the dev ops workflows I'd typically have to subscribe to some other service for.You can run whatever you want on GitHub, whether it's the standard pull request review or fixing an issue, or it's something like generating a story on a cron job or scraping data on a webhook trigger. Essentially anything is possible, and it really brings a ton of value to a Claude Code subscription. This is definitely something I'll be covering in future Claude Code workshops. Sign up for the next workshop here: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

### 🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

**Batch Generate Nano Banana Variations with AI Studio and Scripting**

Manually creating dozens of variations for a single image in a web UI is tedious and inefficient. This lesson demonstrates a powerful workflow for automating this process by leveraging Google AI Studio's "Get code" feature to build a flexible Node.js script. You'll learn how to take a simple image-to-image generation task and scale it up to create a large batch of customized images programmatically.

This approach is perfect for generating marketing assets, social media content, or character sheets where you need a consistent base character with different expressions or styles.

- GitHub Repo: [https://github.com/johnlindquist/expressions](https://github.com/johnlindquist/expressions)
- Watch the lesson: [https://egghead.io/batch-generate-nano-banana-variations-with-ai-studio-and-scripting~ks0vr](https://egghead.io/batch-generate-nano-banana-variations-with-ai-studio-and-scripting~ks0vr)

Time for the news!

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano-Banana) Dominates Image Generation Market

**Google released Gemini 2.5 Flash Image on August 26, 2025, a groundbreaking image generation model that's setting new standards for character consistency and creative control, leaving competitors scrambling to catch up.**

Revolutionary capabilities:
- **Unmatched Character Consistency**: Maintains exact character features across multiple scenes and contexts
- **Multi-Image Fusion**: Seamlessly blend elements from multiple reference images
- **Natural Language Editing**: Targeted edits via conversational prompts (blur backgrounds, remove objects, change colors)
- **World Knowledge Integration**: Leverages Gemini's understanding for contextually appropriate imagery
- **LMArena Champion**: Topped benchmarks for instruction-following and fidelity before official reveal
- **Aggressive Pricing**: $0.039 per image vs. competitors' subscription models
- **Instant Access**: Available in Gemini App (100 free edits/day) and Google AI Studio

> *You just gotta try it. Take an image of yourself, a few items from around the house, and tell Nano Banana to smash them together into some funny pose. Then just be ready to be blown away.*

([Google Developers Blog](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-gemini-2-5-flash-image/), [TechCrunch Coverage](https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/26/google-geminis-ai-image-model-gets-a-bananas-upgrade/), [Axios Report](https://www.axios.com/2025/08/26/nano-banana-google-ai-images))

### Claude Code GitHub Integration Reaches General Availability

**Claude Code's GitHub integration became generally available on August 26, 2025, unlocking powerful automation capabilities that transform how teams handle code reviews, CI failures, and issue management.**

Game-changing features:
- **Expanded Triggers**: Beyond @mentions - new issues, failed CI, custom conditions
- **Automatic CI Fix Attempts**: Claude detects and attempts to fix failing builds
- **Intelligent Code Reviews**: Validates changes against PR intent, not just syntax
- **Subagent Architecture**: Deploy specialized agents for different review types
- **Ready-to-Deploy Templates**: Pre-built workflows for common tasks
- **Issue Triage Automation**: Automatic deduplication and categorization
- **Vulnerability Detection**: Security scanning on new PRs

> *I love that this is integrated with your Claude Pro or Claude Max plans. It really takes a lot of the financial pressure off of running AI tooling for people such as myself who are trying to use AI within a budget. It's nice to be able to just pay a subscription and have it cover all my AI needs. It honestly can replace many of the code review tools or other AI tools that you're using. In fact, if you're currently using an AI tool on GitHub, you can ask Claude, "Hey, please just copy the features of this and turn it into a GitHub action that uses Claude Code."*

([Claude Code GitHub Documentation](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/github-actions))

### OpenAI Launches Codex IDE Extensions and Enhanced CLI

**OpenAI released comprehensive Codex platform updates on August 27, 2025, introducing IDE extensions, cloud integration, and enhanced CLI capabilities powered by their codex-1 model, all included in ChatGPT subscriptions.**

Platform enhancements:
- **Native IDE Extensions**: VS Code, Cursor, and fork support with full context sharing
- **Cloud-to-Local Handoff**: Start tasks in cloud, continue in IDE without losing context
- **Intelligent PR Reviews**: Validates changes against intent, checks dependencies
- **Revamped CLI**: New UI with image inputs, message queuing, web search, to-do lists
- **Unified Agent Experience**: Works across IDE, terminal, cloud, GitHub, and mobile
- **Transparent Rate Limits**: Plus/Team: 30-150 messages/5hrs, Pro: 300-1,500/5hrs
- **Codex-1 Model**: Optimized o3 variant specifically for software engineering

> *OpenAI is massively accelerating their efforts around Codex. I've had a lot of luck using the CLI tool and I've had early access to the extension, and while things aren't as perfect and polished as other IDE tools and ecosystems out there with the sheer amount of velocity they have right now, I can only see this getting better and better. GPT-5 Pro is still my go-to reasoning model for my hardest questions and using the Codex CLI with high reasoning turned on is one of my favorite planning tools as well. So, and again, I love the fact that you can now sign in with ChatGPT and essentially leverage money that you're already paying rather than the pay-as-you-go.*

([OpenAI Codex Developer Hub](https://developers.openai.com/codex/), [TechCrunch Coverage](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/16/openai-launches-codex-an-ai-coding-agent-in-chatgpt/))

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### Cursor 1.5 Brings Native OS Notifications and MCP Support

**Cursor released version 1.5 on August 26, 2025, with game-changing quality-of-life improvements for AI-assisted development.**

Version 1.5 highlights:
- **Native OS Notifications**: Get alerts when long-running agent tasks complete
- **Improved Agent Terminal UX**: Better visibility and control over agent actions
- **MCP Elicitation**: Full Model Context Protocol support
- **Enhanced Jupyter Support**: Improved notebook editing experience
- **Grok Code Integration**: New model option with competitive pricing ($0.2/1M input)
- **Claude 4 Sonnet**: Million token context window now available

> *Cursor is still my favorite IDE, and it just keeps on cranking up the polish. It'll be interesting as all these tools and IDEs start gaining the same features, how to separate themselves from the pack. The common phrase is: "there is no moat", and it'll be interesting to see if Cursor can actually create a moat for themselves.*

([Cursor 1.5 Changelog](https://cursor.com/changelog/1-5))

### Zed Editor Introduces Agent Client Protocol with Gemini Support

**Zed announced the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) on August 27, 2025, creating a universal standard for editor-agent communication.**

Protocol features:
- **Universal standard**: Blueprint for any editor to work with any AI agent
- **Gemini CLI support**: First integration with full code context
- **Multiple agents**: Run different agents simultaneously
- **Open source**: Specification available for all
- **Performance focused**: Maintains Zed's speed-first philosophy

> *I have Zed installed and I have the Gemini CLI installed, but they are two of the tools which I just have not had the time to give a fair shake. The performance of Zed is unmatched, and the context window of the Gemini CLI have been unmatched so far, and if the next version of Gemini is anything, and if Nano Banana image generation gives us any hint of the capabilities of the future Gemini coding models, I think we're really in for a treat here.*

([Zed Blog on ACP](https://zed.dev/blog/bring-your-own-agent-to-zed))

---

## 📚 AI Learning Resources

### Major AI Companies Release Comprehensive Training Guides

**OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google simultaneously released free comprehensive guides on August 28, 2025, representing thousands of hours of internal expertise now publicly available.**

Essential resources:
- **[Google's Prompting Guide](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gemini-for-google-workspace-prompting-guide-101.pdf)**: Complete Gemini for Workspace guide
- **[Anthropic's Building Effective Agents](https://anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-agents)**: Deep dive into agent architecture
- **[Anthropic's Prompt Engineering](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/overview)**: Comprehensive prompt optimization
- **[OpenAI's Agent Building Guide](https://cdn.openai.com/business-guides-and-resources/a-practical-guide-to-building-agents.pdf)**: Practical examples and patterns
- **[OpenAI's Scaling AI Use Cases](https://cdn.openai.com/business-guides-and-resources/identifying-and-scaling-ai-use-cases.pdf)**: Enterprise integration strategies

> *These are some awesome guides that are pretty popular that I realized I hadn't included in previous newsletters. So here you go!*

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem Updates

### Anthropic and OpenAI's Unprecedented Safety Collaboration

**In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, OpenAI and Anthropic ran each other's internal safety evaluations on publicly released models and shared results publicly on August 27, 2025.**

Key findings:
- **Cross-evaluation methodology**: Each ran their safety tests on the other's models
- **Transparency milestone**: Results shared publicly for community benefit
- **Sycophancy issues**: Both identified "extreme sycophancy" across models
- **Model differences**: Claude refused 70% of uncertain questions vs. higher hallucination in OpenAI
- **Industry precedent**: First public collaboration between AI competitors

> *It is awesome to see the major providers working together. I know I easily get sick of the hype cycles and the benchmark maxing and the comparisons when if everyone just kind of worked and collaborated more, we could be making much more progress in a much more responsible way.*

([OpenAI Safety Blog](https://openai.com/index/openai-anthropic-safety-evaluation/), [Anthropic Research Blog](https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/openai-findings/))

### Anthropic Launches Claude for Chrome Browser Extension

**Anthropic announced Claude for Chrome on August 26, 2025, a research preview for browser automation, initially available to 1,000 Max plan users.**

Extension capabilities:
- **Browser automation**: Claude performs actions on your behalf
- **Limited rollout**: 1,000 user pilot for real-world testing
- **Safety focus**: Addressing prompt injection vulnerabilities
- **Max plan exclusive**: Waitlist available for subscribers

> *Again, being able to have all of this under a single subscription plan with Anthropic is still one of the major draws here. Like even if it's not quite as good as many of the other solutions that are out there, many of the other solutions out there just wrap Anthropic's APIs for a lot of the agentic work so having Anthropic come in and build their own tooling is really gonna upset a lot of tools.*

([Anthropic Announcement](http://anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome), [Waitlist](http://claude.ai/chrome))

### Google's NotebookLM Major Upgrade

**NotebookLM announced significant updates on August 26, 2025, evolving into a full knowledge synthesis platform.**

New features:
- **Studio UI**: Generate multiple outputs from single source
- **Video Overviews**: Slide-style summaries with narration
- **Featured Notebooks**: Pre-built notebooks on trending topics
- **Customization Box**: Tailor depth and expertise level
- **Shareable Links**: Public notebook sharing

> *NotebookLM often gets lost in the noise around all the other products out there, but it's definitely worth coming back to over and over again if you're someone who is collecting notes, data, research, etc for any project.*

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Microsoft Releases VibeVoice TTS Model
- **Open source**: 1.5B parameter model with MIT license
- **Long-form audio**: Generate up to 90 minutes
- **Multi-speaker**: Simultaneous generation of 4+ voices
- **Cross-lingual**: Supports multiple languages and singing
([VibeVoice on HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/microsoft/VibeVoice-1.5B))

### Google Vids Surpasses 1 Million Users
- **AI-powered editing**: Automated video creation features
- **Team collaboration**: Built for workplace video needs
([Google Workspace Blog](http://goo.gle/3UNWISl))

---

## ✨ Workshop Spotlight

**Claude Code Power User Workshop**

Want to take your Claude skill to the next level? This workshop is for you!

The past 3 workshops have all sold out, so make sure to grab a spot before they're gone.

**Next session:** Friday, September 12, 2025
**Time:** 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)
**Platform:** Zoom
**🇪🇸 Europe-Friendly Time!** That's 1:00 PM in London, 2:00 PM in Paris & Berlin

Register: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

Read this far? Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend! - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #21: Google nano banana, Claude Code on GitHub, and OpenAI Codex updates

This week's AI Dev Essentials dives into Google's groundbreaking 'Nano Banana' image model, Claude Code's new GitHub automations, and OpenAI Codex updates

## Subscribe to the AI Dev Essentials newsletter!

[https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials](https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials)

## Github Repo

[https://github.com/johnlindquist/expressions](https://github.com/johnlindquist/expressions)

Manually creating dozens of variations for a single image in a web UI is tedious and inefficient. This lesson demonstrates a powerful workflow for automating this process by leveraging Google AI Studio's "Get code" feature to build a flexible Node.js script. You'll learn how to take a simple image-to-image generation task and scale it up to create a large batch of customized images programmatically.

This approach is perfect for generating marketing assets, social media content, or character sheets where you need a consistent base character with different expressions or styles.

## The Workflow

1.  **From UI to Code:** Start by performing a single image variation task in Google AI Studio's Gemini Native Image interface. Then, use the "Get code" button to export the entire interaction—including the Base64-encoded source image and text prompt—as a ready-to-run TypeScript snippet.
2.  **Project Setup:** Set up a new Node.js project using a modern runtime like Bun for speed and simplicity. This includes initializing the project, installing the necessary Google GenAI and MIME type packages, and configuring your environment.
3.  **API Key Management:** Securely manage your Google AI API key by creating a `.env` file. This keeps your credentials out of your source code and makes your script portable.
4.  **Script Refactoring for Automation:** Refactor the initial code snippet for scalability:
    *   Replace the hardcoded Base64 image data with a dynamic file read operation, allowing you to easily swap the source image.
    *   Create an array of text prompts to define all the variations you want to generate (e.g., different emotions, accessories, or styles).
    *   Wrap the API call in a loop that iterates through your prompts.
5.  **Adding Robustness:** Enhance the script with essential features like:
    *   **Error Handling:** Implement `try...catch` blocks to ensure that if one image generation fails, the entire script doesn't crash.
    *   **Descriptive Logging:** Add extensive `console.log` statements to monitor the script's progress, see which image is currently being processed, and get final statistics.
    *   **Unique File Naming:** Programmatically generate unique filenames for each output image, often including a timestamp and the specific prompt used, to keep your assets organized.
6.  **Leveraging AI for Development (Bonus):** This lesson also showcases how a modern, AI-powered editor like Cursor can accelerate the script-building process itself—from generating the list of expressions to refactoring code and fixing stubborn TypeScript errors.

By the end of this lesson, you'll have a powerful, reusable script and a streamlined workflow for generating image variations at scale, moving beyond the limitations of manual UI-based creation.

### AI Prompts

~~~markdown
Please install all the missing dependencies.
~~~

~~~markdown
Please add extensive console logging. This is going to be a script and we want to see all of the progress and everything that's happening in the terminal.
~~~

~~~markdown
Please generate an array of ten expressions covering the wide variety of human emotions.
~~~

~~~markdown
Please insert a formatted date to the beginning of the file name.
~~~

~~~markdown
Please add error handling so that if one generation fails it doesn't block the entire script, and please create a way to track and report in the terminal at the end all of the images that did fail in preparation to attempt to generate them in the future.
~~~

### Terminal Commands

~~~bash
take expressions
~~~

~~~bash
c
~~~

~~~bash
bun init
~~~

~~~bash
bun i @google/genai mime
~~~

~~~bash
bun run index.ts
~~~

### Code Snippets

**Environment Variables (`.env`)**

To securely store your API key, create a `.env` file in your project root.

~~~
GEMINI_API_KEY=AIzaSyDt...
~~~

**Reading the Source Image**

Instead of a hardcoded Base64 string, dynamically read your source image and convert it.

~~~typescript
import { readFile, writeFile } from 'fs/promises';

// ...

const buffer = await readFile('./ai-dev.jpg');
const data = buffer.toString('base64');
~~~

**Defining Expressions to Generate**

Create an array of prompts to loop through. This list was generated by an AI assistant.

~~~typescript
const expressions = [
  'expression: joy, wide smile, sparkling eyes, raised eyebrows',
  'expression: sadness, downcast eyes, furrowed brows, slight frown',
  'expression: anger, narrowed eyes, clenched jaw, furrowed brows',
  'expression: fear, wide eyes, raised eyebrows, open mouth, tense expression',
  'expression: surprise, wide eyes, raised eyebrows, open mouth, shocked expression',
  'expression: disgust, wrinkled nose, narrowed eyes, curled upper lip',
  'expression: contempt, one raised eyebrow, slight smirk, sideways glance',
  'expression: love, soft eyes, gentle smile, relaxed facial muscles',
  'expression: confusion, furrowed brows, tilted head, puzzled expression',
  'expression: excitement, wide smile, bright eyes, flushed cheeks, energetic expression'
];
~~~

Batch Generate Nano Banana Variations with AI Studio and Scripting

Learn how to automate the creation of multiple image variations by exporting code from Google AI Studio and building a powerful Node.js script.

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **20th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

This past week, I've been digging in to customizing Claude Code GitHub Actions. Claude Code now officially supports using your subscription to generate an API key which allows you to use it on GitHub for cron jobs, pull requests, and anything GitHub Actions supports. This is a huge unlock for both cost savings and building your own code maintenance, review agents, etc. Excited to share more about this in the future.

I've been keeping a close eye on OpenAI's Codex CLI with the recent release of GPT-5. They've been making incredible progress and just last night they'll enabled configuring the reasoning effort. Add `model_reasoning_effort = "high"` to your `~/.config/codex/config.toml` file to maximize _every_ codex session :)

I'm really, really enjoying following the reasoning logic of Codex and watching its thinking progress. It's arguably the best reasoning experience I've seen in a CLI and I'm seriously tempted to use it as the starting point for all of my coding tasks then piping the plans into Claude Code to execute... I'll update you next week on that experience.

Lastly, I also recorded and published five lessons focusing on building custom agents in Claude Code. This is an area I'm extremely passionate about and is a huge unlock for overcoming the "stuck" feeling you sometimes get when starting a new session. I'm excited to cover all of this and more in my upcoming workshop: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

### 🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

**Automating Development Workflows with Claude Code Agents**

A collection of practical recipes for automating your development workflow with custom-built Claude Code agents. This course provides a hands-on guide where you'll learn to craft precise system prompts to create reliable, single-purpose agents, package them as simple command-line tools using bun build, and grant them the autonomy to complete multi-step tasks like web research and file creation.

5 lessons covering:
- Crafting precise system prompts for single-purpose agents
- Packaging agents as command-line tools with bun build
- Building autonomous multi-step task workflows
- Web research automation strategies
- File creation and management patterns

Check out the course here:
[https://egghead.io/courses/claude-code-automation-cookbook-recipes-for-ai-agents~tsilh](https://egghead.io/courses/claude-code-automation-cookbook-recipes-for-ai-agents~tsilh)

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### AGENTS.md: The New Standard for AI Agent Context

**The AI coding ecosystem has coalesced around AGENTS.md as a standardized format for providing context and instructions to coding agents, with support from major players including OpenAI, Cursor, Google's Jules, and More.**

Key details:
- **Neutral naming**: OpenAI Codex team chose AGENTS.md to encourage broad adoption
- **Industry alignment**: Major coding assistants now recognize and use this file
- **Open source**: Microsite and specification available on GitHub
- **Renaissance moment**: Marks shift from fragmented approaches to unified standard
- **Immediate adoption**: Already supported across major tools

> *I really hope everyone gets on board with a standardized agents file. I've personally built multiple libraries trying to solve this, especially with how different Cursor's agent files were compared to other tools. I think it's a huge win, even if everyone just agrees on a single markdown file. That way we could at least symlink or easily copy to keep multiple agents in sync. I'm definitely working more and more with multiple agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Gemini all in the same codebase, and I don't even want to think about maintaining rules between them. It's just a painful thing to worry about and manage.*

([AGENTS.md Official Site](http://agents.md/), [GitHub Repository](https://github.com/openai/agents.md))


### Browser Use 0.6.0: Breaking Free from Playwright

**Browser Use has completely rewritten their web automation framework, moving from Playwright to Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) for better performance and stealth.**

Technical improvements:
- **No WebDriver requirement**: Direct CDP connection eliminates WebDriver overhead
- **Less detectable**: Removes Playwright fingerprints that sites detect
- **Faster execution**: Direct protocol access improves speed significantly
- **Better performance**: Lower memory usage and faster operations
- **Maintained compatibility**: Existing scripts work with minimal changes

> *I initially wrote off Browser Use because the Playwright MCP is already so good that I didn't see any reason to use something that leveraged Playwright. But if you look at the Chrome DevTools Protocol and the low level access that gives you to so many things in Chrome, this is definitely a tool I need to revisit for complex scenarios and manipulating the browser. The idea of having access to memory profiling, network interception at the protocol level, and runtime JavaScript compilation control is very enticing, though I haven't had a chance to use these features yet.*

([Browser Use GitHub Release](https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use/releases))

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### OpenAI Codex CLI Works With Your ChatGPT Login

**OpenAI's Codex CLI now integrates directly with your ChatGPT Plus subscription, bringing AI-powered coding assistance to your terminal without additional API costs.**

> *This is one of those things that makes your ChatGPT account that much more valuable and brings it closer to parity with Claude Code. As OpenAI's Codex keeps improving, and many people are seeing great results by using it with high thinking turned on, it becomes a much better value proposition to run both Codex and Claude Code in your same workflows.*

### Claude Code Status Line Customization

**The new Status Line feature in Claude Code provides at-a-glance information about your coding session, with various customization options available.**

> *I really love the new Status Line feature of Claude Code. It's a very simple thing, but it helps keep the main information up front in your face. There's lots of ways to customize it, but I just use the default PowerLine one.*

([Claude PowerLine GitHub](https://github.com/Owloops/claude-powerline))

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem & Business Updates

### Google Expands AI Studio GitHub Integration

**Google AI Studio now features direct GitHub integration, allowing developers to commit changes directly from the AI Studio interface.**

Integration capabilities:
- **Direct commits**: Push changes without leaving AI Studio
- **Branch management**: Create and switch branches from UI
- **Authentication**: Seamless GitHub account connection
- **Project sync**: Keep AI experiments synchronized with repos
- **Collaborative workflows**: Share AI-generated code with teams

> *I've loved AI Studio since day one and they're continuing to add amazing features and updates. It's so easy to spike out some idea in the browser and then just copy and paste the generated code and grab a token. It's a beautiful experience and I love seeing it grow. The GitHub integration is going to be really interesting to see how much of a dev tool AI Studio can really turn into. One tip I could give you is that AI Studio is even easy to use on mobile, and it's one of my favorite AI mobile experiences for development.*

([Google AI Studio](http://ai.studio/))

### OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Go in India

**OpenAI has introduced a new affordable tier specifically for the Indian market at Rs. 399 ($4.80 USD), marking their first region-specific pricing strategy.**

Subscription details:
- **Price point**: Rs. 399 per month (approximately $4.80 USD)
- **Features**: 10x higher limits than free tier across all metrics
- **Payment**: Native UPI support for Indian users
- **Localization**: All pricing now shown in Indian Rupees
- **Strategy**: Testing ground for global expansion of affordable tiers

### ElevenLabs Launches Chat Mode for Voice Agents

**ElevenLabs has released Chat Mode, enabling developers to deploy conversational AI agents with natural voice interactions through simple SDKs or a single line of HTML.**

Technical capabilities:
- **Simple deployment**: One line of HTML for basic integration
- **SDK support**: Full-featured SDKs for advanced use cases
- **Music generation**: Now includes ElevenLabs Music for audio backgrounds
- **Real-time processing**: Low-latency voice interactions
- **Cross-platform**: Works on web, mobile, and desktop

([ElevenLabs Conversational AI](https://convai.new/))

---

## 💻 Cursor Corner

### Cursor CLI Gets Major Update

**Cursor CLI now includes MCP support, Review Mode, compression commands, and improved file selection, bringing desktop features to the command line.**

New CLI features:
- **MCP servers**: Use .cursor/mcp.json definitions
- **Review Mode**: Ctrl+R for change review and follow-ups
- **Context compression**: /compress to free up context window
- **@-file selection**: Reference files and folders directly
- **Token counting**: Visual indicators for context usage
- **AGENTS.md support**: Automatic recognition of new standard

> *The race to be the best CLI tool between Claude Code and the Cursor CLI and Codex and Gemini and all of the other options available is almost funny to watch because the one thing AI is really great at is building CLI tools. So I always imagine in my head each company aggressively prompting their AIs to write better CLI tools than their competitors, and borrowing features while at the same time leveraging each other's CLI tools to accomplish these goals. I almost wish they'd all just get together and figure out the best one, but in the end I know competition will bring out the best tools possible.*

([Cursor CLI](http://cursor.com/cli))

### New Stealth Model Available in Cursor

**Cursor has quietly launched access to a mysterious new model from an unnamed partner, available free to all users for testing.**

What we know:
- **Free access**: Available to all Cursor users at no charge
- **Performance**: Early reports suggest strong coding capabilities
- **Mystery partner**: Cursor team keeping the source confidential
- **Experimental phase**: Gathering user feedback for improvements
- **Integration**: Works seamlessly with existing Cursor features

> *It's fascinating to watch the sheer pace of new models being released. It feels like the "new JavaScript framework every week" era, but now it's a new model every week and it's impossible to keep up. To be honest, the only model updates I'm looking forward to right now are the Anthropic updates and the Google updates. Both are promising significant leaps forward. I've kind of given up trying to follow all the other companies because every time I try them, the tooling just isn't there. No matter how good the model is, if the tooling doesn't support it, then for me it's just not worth it. So I always look to the companies that are invested in both the models and the tooling to make their models perform the best.*

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Anthropic's Claude Can Now End Conversations
- Experimental feature for Opus 4 and 4.1 models
- Last resort for persistently harmful conversations
- Part of model welfare research initiatives
- Most users will never encounter this behavior

([Anthropic Research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/end-subset-conversations))

### DeepSeek V3.1 Released
- Upgraded reasoning and code generation capabilities
- Improved performance on complex tasks
- Available through API and web interface
- Community reports significant improvements

([DeepSeek V3.1](https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1-Base))

### Google Whisk Expands Globally with Veo 3
- Now available in 77 countries
- Adds 8-second video generation with audio
- 5 free animations monthly for all users
- Higher limits for Google AI subscribers

([Google Labs](https://labs.google))

### Google Flow Doubles AI Credits
- 100M+ videos generated to date
- Ultra users get 2x AI credits
- New @FlowbyGoogle account for tips and updates
- Improved generation speed and quality

([Google Labs](https://labs.google))

### Gemini URL Context Now Production-Ready
- Direct URL processing for web pages, PDFs, images
- No additional tool cost, just token pricing
- Automatic content extraction and parsing
- Available in AI Studio and API

([Gemini API Documentation](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/url-context))

### Imagen 4 Generally Available
- Three tiers: Ultra ($0.06), Standard ($0.04), Fast ($0.02)
- Up to 2K resolution output
- 10x faster than previous generation
- Improved text rendering and typography

([Google AI Studio](https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_image))

### MCP Security Vulnerabilities Discovered
- SQL injection bypass in PostgreSQL MCP servers
- Access control weaknesses identified
- Highlights importance of security reviews
- Community working on hardening guidelines

([Node.js Security Blog](https://www.nodejs-security.com/blog/how-to-bypass-access-control-in-postgresql-in-simple-psql-mcp-server-for-sql-injection))

### Claude Learning Styles Now Available to All
- Previously exclusive to Claude for Education
- "Explanatory" mode for detailed reasoning
- "Learning" mode for guided problem-solving
- Available in Claude Code via /output-style

([Claude Documentation](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/output-styles))

### Jules Agent Adds GitHub Export
- Export code to GitHub at any time during tasks
- Create branches and pull requests mid-task
- Increased VM disk space to 20GB
- Better handling of large dependencies

([Jules Agent](https://jules.google/))

### GPT-5 Prompting Best Practices Released
- Six essential tips for GPT-5 coding
- Emphasis on explicit instructions and planning
- Treat prompts like code: version and test
- Ask model to plan approach before coding

([OpenAI GPT-5 Guide PDF](https://cdn.openai.com/API/docs/gpt-5-for-coding-cheatsheet.pdf))

---

## ✨ Workshop Spotlight

### ONLY A COUPLE TICKETS LEFT 👀 Claude Code Power User Workshop - This Friday, August 22nd

Following multiple sold-out sessions, the next Claude Code Power User workshop is scheduled for **this Friday, August 22nd at 9am PDT**.

What we'll cover:
- Building AI pipelines with multiple Claude instances
- Context engineering for complex projects
- Real-world automation workflows
- Live Q&A and troubleshooting

**Register here**: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

Read this far? Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend! - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #20: Claude on GitHub, AGENTS.md & GPT-5 Updates

Explore Claude Code GitHub Actions, GPT-5 updates, AGENTS.md standard, new AI tools, and workflows in AI Dev Essentials Issue #20.

A collection of practical recipes for automating your development workflow with custom-built Claude Code agents. This course provides a hands-on guide where you'll learn to craft precise system prompts to create reliable, single-purpose agents, package them as simple command-line tools using bun build, and grant them the autonomy to complete multi-step tasks like web research and file creation.

Claude Code Automation Cookbook: Recipes for AI Agents

Automate your dev workflow with Claude Code agents. Learn to craft precise prompts, package tools with bun, and build reliable multi-step automation.

# AI Dev Essentials - Issue #19

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **19th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

I spent the past week building out an app to streamline "video prompting". I'll put out a call for beta testers next week 😇

Throughout the process, I've had really good experiences asking Claude Code to drive CLIs (gcloud, vercel, and GitHub) to accomplish tasks like setting up storage buckets, managing permissions, and auto-fixing failed GitHub actions. These tasks used to be extremely painful days wasted diving into complicated settings pages. Thanks to AI's understanding of CLIs, their flags, and their options, it can run the right commands in one shot, verify they're working, and then send you the URLs to confirm. Honsestly, using CLIs with natural langague has taken off so much weight and boredom of chore work and allowed me to focus on the fun stuff. Anyone else felt the same?

I'll be recording some videos based on this week's experiences tomorrow, so I should be posting some interesting videos to egghead soon. They just didn't quite make the cutoff for today's newsletter.

The rest of the time I spent polishing up materials for my Claude Code workshop next Friday. I'm really enjoying teaching all of these powerhouse workflows and excited to share the countless hours of work I've put into them with you.

These Claude Code workshops keep selling out, so grab your ticket now: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

On to the news!

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### GPT-5's Rocky Launch Leaves Developers Divided

**OpenAI released GPT-5 on August 7, 2025, but the highly anticipated launch has been met with confusion and frustration as the model fails to live up to pre-release hype.**

The reality check:
- **Preview vs. Production**: Developers who tested preview models report significant degradation in production
- **Performance issues**: Widespread complaints about speed, especially in IDEs like Cursor where it's "absolutely painful to use"
- **Routing confusion**: Unclear how the model decides between instant responses and deeper reasoning
- **Mixed reception**: Community feedback ranges from "underwhelming" to questioning if they're using it wrong
- **Integration problems**: Slowness and inconsistent behavior across different platforms

What was promised vs. delivered:
- **Promise**: Breakthrough reasoning with intelligent routing
- **Reality**: Inconsistent performance that has developers reverting to Claude or GPT-4
- **Promise**: Enhanced agentic capabilities for development
- **Reality**: Speed issues make it impractical for real-time coding assistance

([OpenAI Official Blog](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5/), [Cursor Community Forum](https://forum.cursor.com/t/gpt-5-slow-very-slow/127337))

> My personal experience with GPT-5 started strong. Right at launch things felt like they were working really well, but then performance degraded over the week. I tried it both inside Cursor and via the Cursor CLI and had a very mixed experience. Sometimes it was great; other times it failed in ways that made it hard to build trust.
>
> That said, with GPT-5 Pro through ChatGPT on the $200 per month plan, I have had incredible experiences solving difficult problems in video recording workflows, refactoring asynchronous code, and other complex tasks that require deep reasoning and a strong understanding of the code. I have seen it optimize code, add edge case handling, cover a wide range of tasks, and get it right the first time. It also creates clear plans that I can hand to other tools. I am using GPT-5 Pro constantly, and right now it is my go to for planning.
>
> Claude Code is still king for me when it comes to agent work, mostly because it's been the most reliable and because of its pacing and feedback. A lot of my GPT-5 sessions show twenty or more tool calls with no explanation, which doesn't provide much insight into what's happening. I hope they take notes from Claude Code on surfacing incremental updates and briefly explaining what's going on.
>
> I get worried when GPT-5 seems like it's doing a lot of work without checking in. Until the visibility and reliability improve, I'll keep leaning on Claude Code for serious agent tasks. We'll see how both the Cursor CLI and Codex improve over time. It would take a massive turnaround for them to truly compete with the experience of Claude Code, especially when it comes to building true AI pipelines.

### Claude Expands Context Window to 1 Million Tokens

**Anthropic announced on August 12, 2025, that Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1 million tokens of context on the Anthropic API, representing a 5x increase from the previous 200,000 token limit.**

Technical details:
- **Context window**: 1 million tokens (approximately 750,000 words)
- **Availability**: API access for Sonnet 4
- **Use cases**: Large codebases, extensive documentation, multi-file analysis
- **Performance**: Maintained speed despite increased context

([Anthropic Official Announcement](https://www.anthropic.com/news/1m-context), [TechCrunch Coverage](https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/12/anthropics-claude-ai-model-can-now-handle-longer-prompts/))

> It is exciting to see more providers catch up with Gemini and offer a one million token context window. Early research suggests Anthropic is doing very well at understanding the full window and keeping responses coherent as conversations get longer.
>
> This just shipped and it's not available in Claude Code yet (even if you try to hack it in, lol).
>
> I am curious whether Gemini will counter with a ten million token context window. There are rumors they have it working internally, but it's not cost efficient to release yet. Given their recent moves, it feels like Gemini is sitting on something significant. I hope they release it to the public soon.

### GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke Departs to Found New Startup

**After nearly four years as CEO, Thomas Dohmke announced on August 11, 2025, his departure from GitHub to become a startup founder again.**

Impact and transition:
- **Legacy**: Led GitHub through significant growth and AI integration era
- **GitHub Copilot**: Oversaw development and expansion of AI coding assistant
- **New venture**: Details of startup not yet announced
- **Transition**: Will remain through end of 2025

([GitHub Official Blog](https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/goodbye-github/), [Tech Startups Coverage](https://techstartups.com/2025/08/11/github-ceo-thomas-dohmke-steps-down-to-launch-new-startup-after-ai-driven-tenure/))

> It is curious to see the GitHub CEO leave at this specific moment when many AI enabled tooling companies are "accelerating" (sorry for the buzzword). It makes it smell like GitHub missed the AI boat and are trying to course correct, but I'm making massive assumptions here. I'm just surprised and curious if there's more to the story.

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### Gemini CLI Updates and VS Code Integration

**Google released significant updates to Gemini CLI during the week of August 4, 2025, including deep VS Code integration and performance enhancements.**

Updates include:
- **VS Code integration**: Native integration with context-aware workflows (v0.1.20)
- **Performance**: Faster response times and improved reliability
- **Guided Learning**: New AI tutor feature using LearnLM and Gemini 2.5 Pro
- **Fine-tuning**: Supervised fine-tuning available for Gemini 2.5 Flash

([Google Developers Blog](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/gemini-cli-vs-code-native-diffing-context-aware-workflows/), [Google Guided Learning](https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/guided-learning/))

> I love seeing the updates to the Gemini CLI. They might be moving a little slower than some others, but they are doing all the right things.
>
> The biggest unlock everyone is waiting for is Gemini becoming a stronger agentic model that can keep up with the models from Anthropic. If Gemini releases a 2.6 or a 3.0 that lets Pro create plans and lets Flash execute those plans, and bundles that with a one million plus context window, we will have something special on our hands.

### Chrome's Built-in AI: Prompt API Now Available

**Google's Prompt API for Chrome enables free, local AI capabilities directly in the browser powered by Gemini Nano, available from Chrome 138 stable.**

Technical specifications:
- **Local execution**: All processing done locally with no data sent to external servers
- **Privacy-first**: Supports offline usage with complete data privacy
- **Chrome Extensions**: Available for extension developers from Chrome 138
- **Model**: Powered by Gemini Nano
- **Use cases**: Text generation, summarization, translation

([Chrome for Developers - Prompt API](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api), [Chrome for Developers - Built-in AI](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in))

> Many people would be surprised by how many AI tools are now built into Chrome. Both the developer tooling and the browser internals are moving toward running models directly in the browser. It feels like Chrome is doing important work that will shape what sites can do, where a site does not need to rely on external AI services for basic features.
>
> On my Script Kit site I have a scenario where a user selection should present autocomplete like options. That is one of the first things I am going to try with the Prompt API. Let someone click a button and get a few suggested options. It does not need much intelligence. It just needs something small and fast. If I can offload that work to the browser that is a huge win for owning the entire workflow rather than relying on providers to be up.
>
> API providers do go down, have issues, and sometimes create poor user experiences. The more control we have over the AI when building our own tools, the better.
>
> I also need to make lessons and tutorials on the AI developer tools inside Chrome DevTools. There is a lot to cover and they are doing incredible work.

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem & Business Updates

### MCP-UI Protocol Gains Momentum

**The Model Context Protocol UI extension is gaining traction as an open RFC being considered for adoption into the MCP specification.**

Development updates:
- **RFC stage**: Open RFC under consideration, may change as proposal advances
- **Component layer**: Enables AI agents to return fully interactive UI components
- **Community adoption**: Growing ecosystem of MCP-UI compatible tools
- **Shopify development**: Shopify actively developing and promoting the protocol

([Shopify Engineering](https://shopify.engineering/mcp-ui-breaking-the-text-wall), [Block/Goose Blog](https://block.github.io/goose/blog/2025/08/11/mcp-ui-post-browser-world/))

> This specification feels important for the future of how we interact with AI tools and AI conversations. The idea of just in time user interfaces that are rendered by MCPs could change everything. At the high end it might replace websites. A more moderate view is that it will give you rich user interfaces on mobile when you are chatting with GPT and Claude and the tools you use every day. Instead of only text you get buttons and controls.
>
> One of my favorite things to do with Claude on mobile, which can render a canvas, is to ask it to create interactive charts and interactive timelines. Instead of a static diagram you can get an animated diagram that you can drag and change. That experience feels like the future.
>
> Bringing those kinds of experiences into the general flow of any tool I use feels like an ideal direction for where MCPs could go. I am cheering this project on.

### Jules Agent Enhances Code Review Capabilities

**Google introduced the Jules Critic feature on August 8, 2025, acting as an internal peer reviewer integrated directly into the code generation process.**

Key features:
- **Automated review**: Flags potential bugs and inefficient code patterns
- **Adversarial review**: Challenges proposed changes before developers see output
- **Integration**: Works seamlessly with existing Jules workflow
- **Reliability**: Significantly improves code robustness

([Google Developers Blog](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/meet-jules-sharpest-critic-and-most-valuable-ally/), [Jules Changelog](https://jules.google/docs/changelog/))

> I have seen so many code review tools at this point that I am not surprised when another one appears. I built my own code review tools last year, so I know this is something I could build myself.
>
> No matter how talented I may or may not be, seeing teams at companies like Google build their own code review tools is not an impressive achievement. It feels like a must have feature now. It also feels odd that GitHub has code review, and then Cursor, CodeRabbit, and others are adding their own code review layers on top.
>
> I am curious if anyone has stacked every code review tool on a single pull request. I would love to see a battle royale of code review tools reviewing nonsense code just for fun.

---

## 💻 Cursor Corner

### GPT-5 Integration Tips and Best Practices

**The Cursor community has been sharing optimal configurations for GPT-5 integration following its release.**

Configuration recommendations:
- **Model selection**: Use `gpt-5` (full reasoning model) with Agent mode and MAX mode enabled
- **Performance notes**: Users continue reporting significant slowness issues with GPT-5 in Cursor
- **Prompting differences**: GPT-5 requires different strategies, focusing on clarity and autonomous behavior rather than explicit instruction
- **Cost considerations**: Higher reasoning modes significantly increase costs through additional reasoning tokens

([OpenAI GPT-5 Documentation](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-for-developers/), [GPT-5 Prompting Guide](https://cookbook.openai.com/examples/gpt-5/gpt-5_prompting_guide), [Cursor GPT-5 Blog](https://cursor.com/en/blog/gpt-5))

Community feedback:
- Mixed initial reactions with improvement after configuration adjustments
- Speed improvements noted after backend optimizations
- Best results with high reasoning effort for complex tasks

> As with any new model there are growing pains in the integration between the model and the IDEs. I do not usually expect this many growing pains on the model side, but this round feels different.
>
> It will take some time before both the model and the IDE settle into an optimized workflow that most people are happy with. That likely means we need some patience for the tools to shine and for the model to fully represent what it is capable of.
>
> If you are fumbling with Cursor right now trying to get GPT-5 to meet your expectations, you are not alone.

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Mistral Small 3.1 Release
- New small-tier model with improved reasoning and code generation
- Enhanced performance while maintaining efficiency
- Available through major API providers

([Mistral AI Models](https://mistral.ai/models))

### Google AI Studio Redesign
- New landing page and improved user interface
- Better model selection and comparison tools
- Enhanced documentation and examples

### Fine-tuning OpenAI's GPT-OSS Locally
- GPT-OSS models (120B and 20B) available under Apache 2.0 license
- Community tutorials through Unsloth and Hugging Face
- 100% local execution maintaining privacy

([OpenAI GPT-OSS Announcement](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-oss/), [Unsloth Documentation](https://docs.unsloth.ai/basics/gpt-oss-how-to-run-and-fine-tune))

### Higgsfield Platform Updates
- Enhanced video generation with Seedance Pro unlimited access
- Supports MiniMax Hailuo-02, Veo 3, and Seedance Pro models
- Image-to-video conversion for creative workflows

([Higgsfield Official Site](https://higgsfield.ai/), [Seedance Pro Launch](https://deepnewz.com/software/higgsfield-launches-bytedances-seedance-pro-ai-unlimited-free-generations-30-4116cf9a))

### Claude Chat History References
- New on-demand recall of past conversations for Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers
- Privacy-focused approach requiring explicit user prompts
- Improved context preservation across sessions

([Anthropic Announcement](https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/anthropic-brings-demand-chat-history-190710803.html), [Business Today](https://www.businesstoday.in/amp/technology/news/story/anthropic-adds-chat-history-recall-to-claude-letting-users-resume-projects-across-devices-489000-2025-08-12))


## ✨ Workshop Spotlight

### Claude Code Power User Workshop - Next Friday, August 22nd

Following our two sold-out workshops, the next Claude Code Power User workshop is scheduled for this **Friday, August 22nd at 9am PDT**

What we'll cover:
- Advanced subagent orchestration patterns
- Building AI pipelines with multiple Claude instances
- Context engineering for complex projects
- Real-world automation workflows
- Live Q&A and troubleshooting

**Register here**: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---

Read this far? Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend! - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #19: GPT-5's Mixed Debut, GitHub CEO Exits, & Claude's 1M Token Window

AI Dev Essentials #19 dives into GPT-5’s rocky launch, Claude’s 1M token context, new AI tooling updates, and tips for boosting CLI workflows with AI.

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **18th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

I'll egostically start with a nice note I received about my first Claude Code Power User workshop 😇

"John’s workshop revealed that I was barely scratching the surface with Claude Code. I’d used features like agents and hooks before, but never to this extent. It was top notch! Insightful, straight to the point and brilliantly structured. We could have easily carried on for another 5 hours!" - Vitor Correa

We've almost sold out for this Friday's workshop too, so last chance to sign up! [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

My time this past week as been spent with:
1. n8n + claude code - I'm building more power user automation workflows that leverage your Claude Code account
2. egghead.io Lessons - I pushed out 5 new lessons about Advance Context Engineering
3. Experimenting with Gemini "Deep Think" - I'm getting some pretty incredible results, but I'm limited to 5 questions per day. I limit my questions to the most impactful personal life improvements, so they're all pretty private. Hopefully they'll allow more requests soon that I can use as demos and lessons.
4. Claude Code course structure - I'm taking all the feedback/experience from the first workshop to tighten up demos and polish the examples. Honestly have so much fun with this.

It's been a wild week of news so far (and apparently gpt5 is dropping tomorrow???), so let's jump right into it!

---

### 🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

#### **Advanced Context Engineering with Claude Code**

The first 5 lessons of the Advanced Context Engineering course are live!

1. Pipe, Redirect, and Automate AI Output in the Terminal
2. Dynamic AI Prompts: Templating with Gomplate
3. Total Context Control: Gomplate Plugins meet Repomix
4. Cloud or Local: A Unified AI Workflow with Ollama and Claude
5. From AI to API: Enforcing Structured Output with JSON Schema and Zod


Check out the course here:

[https://egghead.io/courses/advanced-context-engineering-with-claude-code~z22lo](https://egghead.io/courses/advanced-context-engineering-with-claude-code~z22lo)

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### OpenAI Releases GPT-OSS: State-of-the-Art Open Source Reasoning Model

**OpenAI shocked the industry on August 5, 2025, by releasing gpt-oss, their first open-weights reasoning model that matches o1-mini performance while running on consumer hardware.**

Technical specifications:
- **Models**: gpt-oss-120B (117B total, 5.1B active) and gpt-oss-20B (21B total, 3.6B active)
- **Performance**: Comparable to o1-mini on reasoning tasks
- **Local execution**: 120B runs on high-end laptops, 20B runs on phones
- **Architecture**: Mixture-of-experts with sparse activation
- **Response format**: New "Harmony" structured output format
- **Safety**: Internal benchmarks match frontier models, biosecurity mitigations included

Key integrations:
- **Groq**: 1,100+ tokens/sec for 20B, 500+ tokens/sec for 120B
- **Context**: 128K tokens with built-in tools (code execution, browser search)
- **Availability**: Hugging Face, GitHub, and major cloud providers


> *I've been running this model through ollama and openai's codex. Regular chatting is going great and I'm impressed with the speed/smarts. There seems to be an issue with tool calling (creating/editing files, etc) due to the new Harmony format (the groq hosted version seems to work fine...). I'm assuming this will all get worked out soon. I'm super stoked to have a powerful and free local model I can use in my automations.*

([OpenAI Blog](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-oss/), [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-returns-to-open-source-roots-with-new-models-gpt-oss-120b-and-gpt-oss-20b/), [Hugging Face Models](https://huggingface.co/openai))

### Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.1 with Major Improvements

**Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.1 on August 5, 2025, delivering significant upgrades to agentic tasks, real-world coding, and reasoning capabilities.**

Key improvements:
- **Agentic performance**: Enhanced multi-step task completion
- **Coding**: 74.5% on SWE-bench Verified (up from 72.5%)
- **Reasoning**: 80.9% on GPQA Diamond (up from 79.6%)
- **Availability**: Claude.ai Pro/Max, Claude Code, API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI
- **Coming soon**: "Substantially larger improvements" in the coming weeks


> *I used 4.1 all day yesterday. It definitely felt a little more reliable at the small things. I didn't notice any major improvements, but I'm sure we'll figure them out as the days go by. Anthropic mentioning "substantially larger improvements" has me chomping at the bit (do people still say that?)*

([Anthropic Blog](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-1), [AWS Bedrock Announcement](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/08/anthropic-claude-opus-4-1-amazon-bedrock/))

### Shopify Launches MCP-UI Protocol for AI Commerce

**Shopify announced the MCP-UI protocol on August 5, 2025, enabling seamless shopping experiences within AI agents and chat interfaces.**

Key components:
- **Checkout Kit**: Embed commerce widgets and checkout directly in agents
- **Shopify Catalog**: Low-latency global product search across millions of merchants
- **MCP-UI protocol**: Extension of MCP for exposing secure UI widgets

Technical innovation:
- **Web Components**: Handle variants, subscriptions, bundles automatically
- **No marketplace rules**: Direct merchant relationships, not a marketplace model
- **Enterprise-ready**: Seamless checkout without building complex infrastructure


> *Keep an eye on this space, especially designers. Creating just-in-time MCP Widgets is going to be a big deal.*

([Shopify Engineering Blog](https://shopify.engineering/mcp-ui-breaking-the-text-wall), [Shopify Developer Docs](https://shopify.dev/docs/agents))

### Google DeepMind Unveils Genie 3: Advanced World Simulator

**DeepMind announced Genie 3 on August 5, 2025, the most advanced world simulator ever created, generating interactive 3D environments from text prompts.**

Breakthrough capabilities:
- **Text-to-world**: Generate interactive 3D environments from descriptions
- **Real-time interaction**: Navigate with keyboard, interact with objects
- **Visual fidelity**: 24 fps high-quality rendering at 720p resolution
- **Dynamic prompting**: Modify worlds on the fly
- **World memory**: Visual memory extending up to one minute
- **Research focus**: Training next-generation embodied AI agents

> *What can I say? Wow. Just wow. Like seriously. Pop a VR headset on my face and I'm the God of my own universe. I know I'm exaggrating here, but I did not expect this decade.*

([DeepMind Blog](https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/05/deepmind-thinks-genie-3-world-model-presents-stepping-stone-towards-agi/))

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### Claude Code Best Practices Guide

**Summary of Ian Nuttall's popular thread on Claude Code best practices.**

Key recommendations:
1. **Extended planning phase**: Use Claude Desktop for tech stack discussions before coding
2. **Documentation research**: Find URLs and repos for latest package versions
3. **Detailed step-by-step plans**: Create meticulous plans but feed to Claude Code incrementally
4. **MVP-first approach**: Get working version before adding features
5. **CLAUDE.md files**: Use `/init` and add subdirectory-specific rules
6. **Session tracking**: Log what worked/didn't for future context
7. **Context management**: Use `/clear` before hitting context limits
8. **Sparse subagent usage**: They burn context quickly
9. **Directory-specific rules**: Add CLAUDE.md to each subdirectory for precise context

> *I don't 100% agree with this guide from a technical standpoint (I cover many of my personal nuances that require demos in the workshop), but I absolutely agree with the philosophy.*

([Claude Sessions Tool](https://github.com/iannuttall/claude-sessions), [Anthropic Best Practices](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/claude-code-best-practices))

### MCP Ecosystem Updates: Enhanced Remote Server Support

**MCP ecosystem updates in early August 2025 brought enhanced support for remote server deployment and shared authentication.**

Major updates:
- **Universal remote support**: OAuth, API key, streamable HTTP, SSE backward compatibility
- **Shared credentials**: Login once, use everywhere
- **Cloudflare MCP**: One-click deployment with authentication support

> *Anything that makes OAuth and MCP work better together is a huge win in my book. Such a pain...*

([Cloudflare MCP Documentation](https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-server/), [Cloudflare Blog](https://blog.cloudflare.com/remote-model-context-protocol-servers-mcp/))

### NotebookLM Adds Bulk URL Upload

**Google's NotebookLM quietly launched bulk URL upload functionality in early August 2025, addressing one of the most requested features.**

Enhancement details:
- **Multiple URLs**: Upload many URLs simultaneously
- **Format**: Separate URLs with spaces or newlines
- **Use case**: Research synthesis from multiple sources
- **Integration**: Works with existing Audio and Video Overview features

> *YES! HECK YEAH! Single url uploads was holding NotebookLM back so hard. I haven't had a chance since this released yesterday, but I can't wait to use it.*

([NotebookLM](https://notebooklm.google.com), [XDA Developers](https://www.xda-developers.com/notebooklm-bulk-url-feature/))

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem & Business Updates

### GitHub's "Developers Reinvented" Study Shows AI Transformation

**Thomas Dohmke (GitHub CEO) published findings from GitHub's field study with 22 developers on August 3-4, 2025, revealing how AI is fundamentally changing developer identity and ambitions.**

Key findings:
- **Code generation projection**: AI will write 90% of code within 2-5 years
- **Developer sentiment**: Optimistic and realistic about changes, not worried
- **New core skills**: Agent orchestration, iterative collaboration, critical verification
- **Identity shift**: From code producers to system designers and AI directors
- **Ambition increase**: Developers raising ceiling, not just lowering costs
- **Education implications**: Teaching syntax obsolete, focus on AI collaboration

Adoption phases observed:
1. Dabbling skeptics
2. Cautious experimenters  
3. Strategic collaborators
4. Creative directors of code

> *CEO of company dumping massive amounts of money into AI says AI is important. No surprise. But worth a read.*

([Full Study](https://ashtom.github.io/developers-reinvented), [Free Press Journal](https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/either-you-embrace-ai-or-get-out-of-this-career-github-ceos-blunt-message-to-developers))

### Jules Agent Now Opens Pull Requests

**Google's Jules coding agent added PR creation capabilities on August 4, 2025, completing the full development workflow from plan to pull request.**

New workflow:
- **End-to-end**: Plan → Code → Commit → Pull Request
- **PR generation**: Automatic summary and description writing
- **Review-ready**: Formatted for human review
- **Integration**: Works with existing Git workflows

> *Gemini, Jules, everything Google just feels like sleeper agents (hah, get it?). Google is doing so many things right across so many products whereas the other providers are just integrating with other products. If Gemini 3.0 is anywhere near GPT-5, I'm not sure the other providers will be able to compete...*

([Jules Changelog](https://jules.google/docs/changelog/), [Google AI Blog](https://blog.google/technology/google-labs/jules/))

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Google Sans Code Font Released
Google launched a monospaced font specifically for coding with geometric precision and Renaissance-inspired italics. Available in Android Studio and Gemini. ([Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Google+Sans+Code))

### Manus.ai Wide Research Launched  
Launched July 31, 2025 - deploys 100+ parallel AI agents for large-scale research tasks. Available for Pro plan users ($199/month). ([Manus Blog](https://manus.im/blog/introducing-wide-research), [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/youve-heard-of-ai-deep-research-tools-now-manus-is-launching-wide-research-that-spins-up-100-agents-to-scour-the-web-for-you/))

### Horizon Alpha Stealth Model
Mystery high-performance model appearing on OpenRouter achieving 97% accuracy in coding tasks and 100% in ethics benchmarks. Available free during preview. ([OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai), [Benchable AI](https://benchable.ai/models/openrouter/horizon-alpha))

### CCFlare: Claude Code Proxy with Monitoring
Intelligent CC proxy with load balancing, rate limit management, and analytics for Claude Code usage. ([GitHub](https://github.com/snipeship/ccflare), [CCFlare](https://ccflare.com))

---

## ✨ Workshop Spotlight

### Claude Code Power User Workshop - August 8th

Following our first sold-out workshop, the next Claude Code Power User workshop is scheduled for this **Friday, August 8th at 12pm UTC** (1pm UK / 2pm Europe). 

What we'll cover:
- Advanced subagent orchestration patterns
- Building AI pipelines with multiple Claude instances
- Context engineering for complex projects
- Real-world automation workflows
- Live Q&A and troubleshooting

Almost sold out!

**Register here**: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

---


Read this far? Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend! - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[https://egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #18: OpenAI's GPT-OSS, Claude 4.1 & Google's Genie 3

Explore AI Dev Essentials #18: Claude Code tips, new lessons on context engineering, and major AI releases from OpenAI, Anthropic, Shopify, and more.

The quality of an AI's output is determined by the quality of its input. "Context Engineering" is the professional practice of giving an AI the exact information it needs to produce reliable, deterministic results. In this course, you will master the tools and techniques required to take absolute control over your AI's context. We'll leverage all the tools in our dev belts with shell pipes, templating engines, custom plugins, enforcing output schemas and much more. Stop guessing and start engineering your AI interactions for professional-grade automation.

Advanced Context Engineering with Claude Code

Master “Context Engineering” to give Claude Code precise input for reliable results. Learn pipes, templates, plugins, schemas & more for pro-grade automation.

# AI Dev Essentials - Issue #17

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **17th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

My first Claude Code Power User Workshop sold out in less than seven days—thanks to everyone for their support! I've already posted the next workshop for Friday, August 8th at 12pm UTC (1pm UK / 2pm Europe), and it's selling out just as quickly, so make sure to grab your spot now.

All my time has been spent preparing for these Claude Code workshops, especially with the release of new features like custom subagents. These have fundamentally changed how I work with Claude Code. I'll be making egghead videos about these topics as well, diving deeper into specialized scenarios and use cases to share with everyone.

Now, onto the news!

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Claude Code Custom Sub-agents Launch

**Anthropic released custom sub-agents for Claude Code on July 24, 2025, enabling developers to create specialized AI teams that handle specific tasks autonomously.**

Key capabilities:
- **Custom agent creation**: Design agents for code review, architecture, testing, and more
- **Automatic invocation**: Claude Code intelligently calls relevant agents based on context
- **Template ecosystem**: Community sharing agents via GitHub repositories
- **Project-level customization**: Store agents in `.claude/agents/` or globally in `~/.claude/agents/`
- **Refresh requirement**: Must refresh Claude Code after creating new agents

Popular agent types emerging:
- **Code refactorer**: Automated refactoring with best practices
- **Security auditor**: Vulnerability scanning and security recommendations
- **Frontend designer**: UI/UX improvements and component design
- **PRD writer**: Product requirement documentation from ideas

([Anthropic Documentation](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/sub-agents), [Anthropic Blog](https://www.anthropic.com/news/how-anthropic-teams-use-claude-code))

> *Before sub-agents, I was building aliases with Claude Code and chaining them together through AI pipelines. While that's still a valuable technique, sub-agents have vastly simplified setting up these pipelines and handing tasks off to specialized child agents. It's definitely one of my new favorite features. I especially love how easy it is to create an agent using their custom slash commands—just dictate a few sentences about what you want it to do, and it generates the agent itself. Really looking forward to diving deeper into this.*

### Anthropic Announces Weekly Rate Limits for Claude Pro/Max

**Anthropic announced on July 28, 2025, that new weekly rate limits will be implemented starting August 28, 2025, affecting less than 5% of Claude Pro and Max subscribers based on current usage patterns.**

Details:
- **Context**: Claude Code has seen "unprecedented demand," especially on Max plans
- **Edge cases**: One user consumed "tens of thousands" in model usage on a $200 plan
- **Account sharing**: Violations of usage policies through account reselling detected
- **Solution**: Max plan users can purchase additional usage at standard API rates
- **Impact**: Estimated to affect heavy users running Claude Code 24/7

([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/28/anthropic-unveils-new-rate-limits-to-curb-claude-code-power-users/), [Engadget](https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-is-rate-limiting-claude-code-blaming-some-users-for-never-turning-it-off-211134730.html))

> *I fully understand Anthropic's position here. I spent a few days running Claude Code 24/7 using background tasks with multiple subagents, and based on some calculations, I was racking up what would have been costs in the many thousands of dollars. We've seen Cursor do this in the past where they had an unlimited plan but had to back off. It seems to be a pattern: lure in customers with generous offerings, then change the policies. The main lesson is don't subscribe to yearly plans, because these companies will change the pricing underneath you. That said, I still think Anthropic's $200 a month is a screaming deal. If I ever run out of credits for the week, I'll just buy a second account. It achieves way more for $200 than I could ever achieve on my own. I'm constantly using it, prompting it, tweaking things with it. I can't imagine development without it. In fact, I'm using it right now by dictating and asking it to polish this commentary (although I still go back and hand-edit for that hand-crafted, home-grown feel).*

### ChatGPT Study Mode Rolls Out to All Users

**OpenAI's Study Mode is now available to all free, Plus, Pro, and Teams users as of July 29, 2025, expanding educational AI capabilities across the platform.**

Features:
- **Universal access**: Available across all ChatGPT tiers
- **Educational focus**: Designed to make learning more accessible and intentional
- **Interactive learning**: Adaptive questioning and explanations
- **Subject coverage**: Works across all academic disciplines

([OpenAI Official](https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-study-mode/), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/29/openai-launches-study-mode-in-chatgpt/))

> *I tried ChatGPT Study Mode briefly last night and didn't see much value compared to the prompts I use to generate quizzes on topics. But I definitely need to spend more time giving it a fair shake before drawing any real conclusions. It's fairly trivial to ask any AI agent to create quizzes and materials. Maybe this is just a streamlined UI for less advanced users. I know many of us could do this ourselves.*

### Google Introduces NotebookLM Video Overviews

**Google launched Video Overviews in NotebookLM on July 29, 2025, creating visual summaries with slides, diagrams, and AI narration from uploaded sources.**

Technical details:
- **Format**: Short, engaging slide presentations
- **Content**: Automatically extracts images, diagrams, quotes, and data
- **Narration**: AI host provides voice-over explanations
- **Alternative to**: Audio Overviews for visual learners
- **Use cases**: Research synthesis, presentation creation, study materials

([Google Blog](https://blog.google/technology/google-labs/notebooklm-video-overviews-studio-upgrades/), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/29/googles-notebooklm-rolls-out-video-overviews/))

> *I've generated a few of these so far and absolutely love them. The narrator's voice is extremely pleasant. It's probably the best AI voiceover I've ever heard. I love the slides, the way it highlights text, pretty much everything about it. Definitely looking forward to generating more of these.*

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling Updates

### Cursor 1.3: Enhanced Agent Capabilities

**Cursor 1.3 is rolling out with significant improvements to agent interaction and development workflow transparency.**

Major updates:
- **Shared terminal**: Agents can now interact with your terminal session
- **Context usage visibility**: See exactly what context is being used in Chat
- **Faster edits**: Performance improvements across the board
- **Git integration**: Checkpoints now use git under the hood
- **Notebook support**: Checkpoints work with Jupyter notebooks
- **Security**: Removed denylist for auto-run, improved security model
- **UI improvements**: Right-click directories to send to chat

([Cursor Changelog](https://cursor.com/en/changelog), [AlternativeTo](https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/7/cursor-1-3-adds-agent-terminal-sharing-faster-edits-and-enterprise-controls/))

> *Backgrounding tasks in the terminal has been one of the biggest pain points in Cursor agents, so I'm definitely excited to see this feature. Honestly, I haven't had a chance to fully test it out yet, but I'm looking forward to putting it through the ringer.*

### Microsoft Edge Copilot Mode: Multi-Tab RAG

**Satya Nadella unveiled Copilot Mode in Edge on July 28, 2025, introducing multi-tab RAG capabilities that analyze all open browser tabs simultaneously.**

Key features:
- **Multi-tab analysis**: RAG across all open tabs in real-time
- **Research synthesis**: Combine information from multiple sources
- **Browser-native AI**: First step in "reinventing the browser for the AI age"
- **Academic use case**: Demonstrated analyzing Nature journal papers
- **Contextual understanding**: Maintains context across different websites

([Microsoft Edge Blog](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/07/28/introducing-copilot-mode-in-edge-a-new-way-to-browse-the-web/), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/28/microsoft-edge-is-now-an-ai-browser-with-launch-of-copilot-mode/))

> *It's fascinating watching every browser add AI capabilities. I've used Chrome forever, so I don't see any AI feature pulling me away after I've customized all my extensions. I've tried the Dia browser, but I spend so much more time using AI in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude's actual home pages than opening browser tabs and asking questions. Maybe I just need to adjust my mindset to optimize to chatting with multiple tabs? But my multiple tabs are usually multiple AI sessions that have done searches inline, so 🤷‍♂️*

### OpenTUI: Terminal UI Library for TypeScript

**SST is sponsoring the development of OpenTUI, a TypeScript library for building terminal UIs, with impressive real-time rendering capabilities.**

Technical specifications:
- **TypeScript-first**: Native TypeScript support for terminal UIs
- **Performance**: Real-time rendering without speed-up in demos
- **Based on**: kmdrfx's previous work
- **Repository**: [github.com/sst/opentui](https://github.com/sst/opentui)
- **Use cases**: CLI tools, development dashboards, interactive terminals

([GitHub Repository](https://github.com/sst/opentui), [SST Blog](https://sst.dev/blog/announcing-opentui))

> *The OpenCode terminal team is definitely pushing terminals way beyond what I thought they were capable of. It does seem a bit ironic to build UIs inside terminals when that's not their purpose at all. I don't see the value when there are so many IDEs with built-in terminals where you could build way more advanced UIs that interact with the terminals and let them do what they're best at. But who knows? I could be surprised. I know this is definitely going to appeal to a certain subset of developers.*

---

## 💼 AI Business & Ecosystem

### Industry Shift: From Documentation to Rapid Prototyping

**Tech companies are experiencing a fundamental cultural shift from documentation-heavy processes to rapid prototyping, enabled by AI coding assistants.**

Cultural transformation across the industry:
- **Old model**: Extensive PRDs and documentation before development
- **New model**: "Vibe-code" prototypes created in hours instead of days
- **Role evolution**: Product and engineering roles increasingly overlapping
- **Time equation**: AI-assisted prototyping now faster than writing specifications
- **Impact**: Ideas tested in code before extensive planning phases

([Industry Analysis](https://www.computerworld.com/article/4029384/ai-coding-tools-reshape-software-development-culture.html))

> *I like seeing these efforts where project managers are being taught to think in AI workflows. We all need to adjust to what our new tools are capable of. The longer we fight against it and stick to traditional ways, the faster we'll fall behind when it comes time to really leverage these tools' full power. Even if we fail sometimes using these tools, it's better to be prepared for when they become more reliable. If there's one thing we've noticed, it's that AI tools have grown increasingly reliable over the past year. Think about how you use AI today compared to July 2024.*

### Cline's Critique of AI Subscription Economics

**Cline published a detailed analysis explaining why subscription models for AI inference are economically unsustainable.**

Key arguments:
- **Cost mismatch**: $200/month power users can burn $500/day in AI costs
- **Provider losses**: Up to $14,800/month per heavy user
- **Commodity nature**: AI inference is like gas or electricity
- **Hidden limits**: Providers forced to add undisclosed usage caps
- **Solution**: Bring-your-own-key model with transparent usage
- **Business model**: Cline monetizes through enterprise features, not inference markup

([Cline Blog](https://cline.bot/blog/the-economic-realities-of-commodity-subscription-models), [VentureBeat Analysis](https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-ai-subscription-models-are-economically-unsustainable/))

> *I shared this because I thought it was interesting commentary on pricing models, tokens, and tools. I don't think anyone really has insight into what the future holds regarding price versus model capabilities. How much work does $10 get you? Right now, we're all caught up in pricing model changes being pulled out from under us. But it's quite possible that by this time next year, everything will be so cheap and fast that it won't matter.*

---

## 🤖 Model & Research Updates

### Z.ai Launches GLM-4.5 and GLM-4.5 Air

**Z.ai released GLM-4.5 (355B total/32B active) and GLM-4.5-Air (106B total/12B active) on July 28, 2025, featuring frontier reasoning, coding, and agentic capabilities.**

Technical specifications:
- **GLM-4.5**: 355B parameters total, 32B active, $0.6/$2.2 per 1M tokens
- **GLM-4.5-Air**: 106B parameters total, 12B active, $0.2/$1.1 per 1M tokens
- **Training**: Hybrid post-training with domain-specific experts
- **Features**: Native coding agent inspired by Claude Code
- **Benchmarks**: Pareto frontier performance at respective scales
- **Availability**: Weights on Hugging Face, APIs via Z.ai and OpenRouter

Notable capabilities:
- **Website generation**: Create full-stack sites from prompts
- **Slides/Poster agent**: Model-native presentation creation
- **Interactive artifacts**: Games, physics simulations in HTML/SVG/Python

([Z.ai Blog](https://z.ai/blog/glm-4.5), [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/zai-org/GLM-4.5), [PR Newswire](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zai-releases-glm-4-5--setting-new-standards-for-ai-performance-and-accessibility-while-improving-affordability-302514803.html), [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/chinese-startup-z-ai-launches-powerful-open-source-glm-4-5-model-family-with-powerpoint-creation/))

> *I've seen many benchmarks, but not many people actually using. I'll dig in next week, but I've been fooled by benchmarks before so I'm tempering my excitement.*

### Gemini 2.5 MCP Integration: 2,700+ APIs via Pipedream

**Google showcased Gemini 2.5's MCP integration connecting to 2,700+ APIs and 10K tools through Pipedream in under 100 lines of code.**

Implementation details:
- **Code simplicity**: Complete agent in &lt;100 lines
- **API access**: 2,700+ APIs through Pipedream
- **Tool count**: 10,000+ available tools
- **Demo**: Google Calendar and Gmail integration
- **Repository**: [GitHub example](https://github.com/philschmid/gemini-samples/blob/main/scripts/gemini-mcp-pipedream.py)

([Google DeepMind Blog](https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/google-gemini-updates-io-2025/), [Pipedream Platform](https://pipedream.com/), [GitHub Example](https://github.com/philschmid/gemini-samples))

> *It's fascinating to see Gemini excel in some areas, especially with larger context windows, where other agents fail. They're tackling problems many people don't have yet—and might never have. I'm definitely never going to build a tool that connects to 2,700 APIs, but I'm glad someone's pushing the boundaries that way.*

---

## 🎨 Creative AI Breakthroughs

### Photoshop Beta: Harmonize Feature Revolution

**Adobe's Photoshop beta introduced Harmonize on July 29, 2025, fundamentally changing how compositing works in professional image editing.**

([Adobe Blog](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/07/29/powerful-new-photoshop-innovations-creators-creative-pros), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/29/adobe-adds-new-ai-powered-image-editing-features-to-photoshop/))

> *I feel like this is the holy grail for photo editing. I'm decent with the lasso tool and yanking a picture of somebody and plopping it onto a background. But I've never been great at matching lighting or getting the colors just right. This is exciting work. For time-saving design work, especially marketing campaigns, this is going to save people an unfathomable amount of time.*

### Veo 3's Emergent Visual Instruction Capability

**Google discovered an emergent capability in Veo 3 where the model can read and execute visual instructions drawn on the first frame of a video.**

How it works:
- **Input method**: Draw or annotate instructions on the starting frame
- **Execution**: Model interprets and executes instructions sequentially
- **Prompt**: "Delete instructions and execute in order"
- **Applications**: Complex spatial relationships, multi-step animations
- **Discovery**: Found by Google Labs team during testing

([Google Flow Blog](https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-flow-veo-ai-filmmaking-tool/), [DeepNewz AI](https://deepnewz.com/ai-modeling/googles-veo-3-learns-to-follow-hand-drawn-video-instructions-89633fd8))

> *I love this story so much. The fact that they didn't design for this, but people discovered a way to use it, is something we'll see more and more of as these models improve. And it's not just a minor discovery—it's an awesome way of interacting with video. Classic storyboarding with arrows and text boxes is just chef's kiss perfection. It makes me wish I was doing more AI video work.*

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

- **Ian Nuttall's 7 custom Claude Code agents**: code-refactorer, prd-writer, project-task-planner, vibe-coding-coach, security-auditor, frontend-designer, content-writer ([GitHub](https://github.com/iannuttall/claude-agents), [Thread](https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1948702664348631446))
- **Gemini CLI comparison vs Claude Code**: 50+ task comparison shows tool choice depends on specific use case - Claude Code excels at multi-file edits, Gemini at single-file refactoring ([Analysis](https://x.com/DynamicWebPaige/status/1949963776918171788))
- **Alex Albert collecting non-coding Claude Code uses**: Community sharing creative applications beyond development ([Thread](https://x.com/alexalbert__/status/1948765443776544885))
- **Cursor tips thread**: Eric Zakariasson gathering lesser-known Cursor features from community ([Discussion](https://x.com/ericzakariasson/status/1948774763318706684))
- **Imagen 4 Ultra**: Logan Kilpatrick confirms "best text to image model in the world" available in Gemini API ([Announcement](https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1948815146115314001))
- **swyx on ambient agents**: Predicts 1-2hr autonomy barrier will be broken by EOY 2025, changing usage patterns ([Thread](https://x.com/swyx/status/1948871669646590165))

---

## ✨ Live Workshop: Transform into a Claude Code Power User  ✨

Full details: [https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code](https://egghead.io/workshop/claude-code)

Learn the latest power user workflows to maximize your productivity. Join me live as I walk through building CLI chains, video prompting, triggering workflows on hooks, and much more:

* **When:** Friday, August 8th at 12pm UTC (1pm UK / 2pm Europe)  
* **Where:** Zoom  
* **Investment:** $350

➡️ [**Register Now**](https://buy.stripe.com/bJe3cog5f5iq1oBdNU9fW0c)

_Selling out quickly. Secure your spot today!_  

---

Thanks for reading! What custom agents are you building? I'd love to hear about your experiments.

Read this far? [Share "AI Dev Essentials" with a friend!](https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials) - https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials

- John Lindquist

[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #17: Claude Sub-Agents, Weekly Limits, and Copilot Multi-Tab RAG

I tweak my AI Dev Tools almost weekly. I'll keep this list up-to-date with everything I currently recommend:

## 1. Super Whisper 2 with Parakeet Model 🎤

**Purpose:** Instant, accurate voice-to-text for rapid ideation and documentation

I use Super Whisper constantly throughout my day for:
- Dictating implementation plans directly to Cursor/Claude Code
- Drafting emails and documentation
- Capturing fleeting thoughts before they disappear

The new Parakeet model provides exceptional accuracy and speed. It's become an essential part of my workflow for turning thoughts into text without breaking flow.

**Price:** $9/month  
**Get it:** [Super Whisper on Gumroad](https://superwhisper.com)

## 2. Basic Memory 🧠

**Purpose:** Open-source markdown + database system for persistent AI context

Basic Memory creates a searchable knowledge base that:
- Works seamlessly with Cursor, Claude, and any MCP-compatible tool
- Stores context in version-controllable, Git-friendly markdown
- Maintains human-readable documentation of your project history

This tool solves the context window problem by giving AI assistants access to your project's accumulated knowledge.

**Price:** Free (open source)  
**Get it:** [Basic Memory on GitHub](https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory)  

## 3. Cursor 🖱️

**Purpose:** Primary AI-powered code editor

Cursor has become my go-to editor because of:
- Lightning-fast tab completion that actually understands context
- Powerful agent/background agent/bug bot experiences
- Continuous improvements and feature releases
- Excellent integration with various AI models

The team ships improvements constantly, making it feel like the editor gets smarter every week.

**Price:** $20/month (Pro plan)  
**Get it:** [cursor.com](https://cursor.com)  
**Documentation:** [docs.cursor.com](https://docs.cursor.com)

## 4. Claude Code 🤖

**Purpose:** Best-in-class agentic coding assistant

Claude Code stands out as the current leader in autonomous coding:
- Superior tool-calling capabilities compared to alternatives
- Flat pricing for unlimited usage (crucial for heavy users)
- Custom script integration through the SDK (game-changer!)
- Exceptional understanding of complex codebases

The ability to integrate custom scripts makes this incredibly powerful for personalized workflows.

**Price:** $200/month (Max 20x Pro plan)  
**Get it:** [claude.ai/download](https://claude.ai/download)  
**GitHub:** [anthropics/claude-code](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code)

## 5. Warp Terminal 🚀

**Purpose:** AI-enhanced terminal for faster command-line workflows

Warp transforms the terminal experience with:
- Incredible speed - everything feels instantaneous
- Smart command auto-completion
- Natural language to complex command generation
- Intelligent history search
- AI-powered error explanations

It's the terminal reimagined for the AI era.

**Price:** Free (paid plans available for AI Agents)  
**Get it:** [warp.dev](https://www.warp.dev)  
**Documentation:** [docs.warp.dev](https://docs.warp.dev)

## 6. Pieces App 📚

**Purpose:** Automatic work tracking and searchable local knowledge base

Pieces creates a personal AI assistant that:
- Captures browser activity, code snippets, and chat conversations automatically
- Makes everything queryable through MCP in Cursor/Claude Code/Scripts
- Generates "What I'm working on" summaries to maintain context across projects
- Builds a searchable archive of your development history

This tool ensures nothing gets lost in the shuffle of multiple projects.

**Price:** $20/month (Pro plan, generous free tier available)  
**Get it:** [pieces.app](https://pieces.app)  
**MCP Integration:** [pieces.app/features/mcp](https://pieces.app/features/mcp)

## 7. Script Kit 📜

**Purpose:** Build and trigger AI scripts through various automation methods

Script Kit (disclosure: I created this) enables powerful automation through:
- Keyboard shortcuts for instant script execution
- Cron scheduling for automated tasks
- System event triggers
- Integration with AI models for intelligent automation

It's the glue that connects your tools and workflows together.

**Price:** Free & Open Source  
**Get it:** [scriptkit.com](https://scriptkit.com)  
**GitHub:** [johnlindquist/kit](https://github.com/johnlindquist/kit)  
**Documentation:** [Script Kit Docs](https://johnlindquist.github.io/kit-docs/)

## 8. Bee AI Wristband ⌚

**Purpose:** Ambient conversation capture and automatic note-taking

The Bee wristband:
- Records conversations throughout the day unobtrusively
- Takes automatic notes without manual intervention
- Syncs with other tools in your stack
- Captures context you'd otherwise forget

It's particularly helpful for capturing insights from meetings, conversations, and spontaneous ideas.

**Price:** $50  
**Get it:** [bee.computer](https://www.bee.computer/bee-pioneer)

## 9. Fusion ☢️

**Purpose:** Load any project into an AI designer

Fusion stands out because it:
- Works with any framework or technology stack (not limited to Next.js)
- Provides intelligent design suggestions
- Continuously improves with regular updates

This tool bridges the gap between code and design in AI development.

**Note:** Specific product URL pending verification

## 10. Honorable Mentions

### AI Studio/Gemini 🎬
**Purpose:** Video processing and rapid design iteration

Google's AI Studio with Gemini provides:
- Best-in-class video processing capabilities
- Quick design iteration workflows
- Multimodal understanding

**Price:** $20/month  
**Get it:** [aistudio.google.com](https://aistudio.google.com)

### ChatGPT o3 Pro 🧠
**Purpose:** Complex reasoning and deep research

The o3 Pro tier offers:
- Advanced reasoning for complex questions
- Comprehensive planning capabilities
- Deep research mode for thorough analysis

**Price:** $200/month for o3 Pro access  
**Get it:** [OpenAI ChatGPT Pricing](https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing/)


---

## Total Monthly Cost

Here's the breakdown of my complete stack:
- Super Whisper 2: $9/month
- Basic Memory: Free
- Cursor: $20/month
- Claude Code: $200/month
- Warp Terminal: Free
- Pieces App: $20/month
- Script Kit: Free
- Bee AI Wristband: $50 (one-time)
- AI Studio/Gemini: $20/month
- ChatGPT o3 Pro: $200/month

**Total:** ~$469/month (plus $50 one-time for Bee)

While this might seem like a significant investment, the productivity gains far outweigh the costs. Each tool eliminates friction in different parts of the development process, and together they create a workflow that feels almost magical.

The key is choosing tools that complement each other and create a cohesive ecosystem rather than a collection of disconnected utilities.

AI Dev Stack

Developer knowledge often lives in separate silos from the codebase. This course demonstrates how to create a unified workflow where your notes, ideas, and conversations directly feed into your development process. We will build a local, AI-queriable knowledge base using Markdown and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). You will learn to turn unstructured daily notes into structured data, like bug reports and feature requests, using custom AI prompts. We will then automate this entire pipeline, from capturing an idea to generating the corresponding project file, creating an efficient and repeatable system.

In this course, you will learn to:
* Centralize project knowledge in a local, AI-queriable Markdown system.
* Create a repeatable process for exporting and organizing past AI conversations.
* Connect unstructured daily notes to structured project tasks using custom prompts.
* Automate the creation of issues, features, and bug reports from your notes.
* Develop headless scripts that integrate these knowledge workflows into your terminal.
* Design and implement custom agents to make complex workflows easy to reuse.

Create an AI-Automated MCP-Driven Markdown Knowledge Base

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **15th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**. A new Open Source model named "Kimi K2" is taking the AI world by storm, and I'm HERE FOR IT! I hooked Kimi K2 up to Groq inside of Cline and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the sheer speed and intelligence absolutely demolishing tasks. I honestly feel like it has 4x'ed my productivity. My biggest concern is going to be hitting limits (both on tokens and on cost), but just knowing that this is what the near future of development looks like is so frikin' exciting.

After a lot of thought and discussions with trusted friends here's a quick update from previous announcements:

### All Upcoming AI Courses, Tips, and Tricks will be published on egghead.io 😎

After announcing "CursorPro.ai" 2 weeks ago, I received a truckload of questions around "What about Claude Code?", "Is it only Cursor?", "When will it be finished?", format, pricing, etc.

To keep it simple, I will publish all upcoming AI courses as paid courses on egghead.io. So all you have to do is subscribe (or Re-subscribe 😘) to egghead.io and you'll receive all the latest AI Dev Essential lessons the moment they're released. This will immensely streamline the publishing process so you can get the latest tutorials as soon as possible. We'll be increasing the subscription price in the near future, so consider locking-in at the current price as the new "early bird" pricing:

✅ Subscribe here: [https://egghead.io/pricing](https://egghead.io/pricing)

And yes, I'll focus much more on Claude Code, Context Engineering, scripting AI tools, etc, but still allow myself breathing room to cover some of the Cursor best practices and workflows.

Tomorrow, I'l publish my first batch of lessons caled "Create a Markdown-Based Knowledge Base with MCPs" and I can show how to hook it into both Claude Code and Cursor without having to dance around the "CursorPro.ai" naming.

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Kimi K2: The Open-Source Giant That Changes Everything

Moonshot AI just dropped Kimi K2, and it's not just another model release - it's a paradigm shift. This 1 trillion parameter MoE model with 32B active parameters is now the open-source champion, outperforming Claude 4 and Gemini 2.5 on key benchmarks while being completely open and accessible.

The numbers are staggering:
- **Architecture**: 1 trillion total parameters with 32B active parameters per token
- **Performance**: LiveCodeBench v6 score of 53.7 (vs Claude Opus 4 at 47.4)
- **Cost**: $0.15/M input tokens, $2.50/M output tokens (100x cheaper than Claude Opus 4)
- **Context**: 128K-token context window with stable performance
- **Training**: Pre-trained on 15.5T tokens with zero instability
- **License**: Modified MIT License - truly open source

([Official GitHub Repository](https://github.com/MoonshotAI/Kimi-K2), [MarkTechPost Coverage](https://www.marktechpost.com/2025/07/11/moonshot-ai-releases-kimi-k2-a-trillion-parameter-moe-model-focused-on-long-context-code-reasoning-and-agentic-behavior/), [Hugging Face Weights](https://huggingface.co/moonshotai))

> I'm so extremely excited for this as I already said above.. It'll be fascinating to watch what sort of impact this has on the community at large.

### Groq + Kimi K2: The Speed Revolution

Groq integrated Kimi K2 onto their LPU infrastructure, achieving 185 tokens per second - significantly faster than the 16.2 tokens/second average across all providers. While not the claimed 1,000 tokens/second, it's still the fastest Kimi K2 inference available.

Groq's official announcement confirms "*YOLO Launch* Kimi K2 is now in preview on GroqCloud at 185 tokens/sec. Build fast." For context, Groq has achieved up to 800+ tokens/second with other models like Llama 3, showing the potential for future optimizations.

([Groq Official Announcement](https://x.com/GroqInc/status/1944944178145976337), [Groq Documentation](https://console.groq.com/docs/model/moonshotai/kimi-k2-instruct), [Community Discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567897))

> There's just something special about watching code appear faster than you can read it. One of my biggest pain points with using any sort of AI tooling Is falling out of the zone where I have to keep on context switching between all the various tasks I'm working on because things are happening in the background. If we can finally get to the point where The models can generate quality code fast enough to keep it in the foreground so that I can stay in the zone and focused on the task, then that'll completely change the way I think about. Using all of the tools and the way I approach all of my projects, it's really a drastic shift. From the way I've thought about using all these tools in the past.

### Cognition Acquires Windsurf: The Strategic Masterstroke

Cognition (makers of Devin AI) officially acquired Windsurf on Monday, July 14, 2025, following a whirlwind weekend deal. The acquisition includes Windsurf's IP, trademark, brand, and all remaining employees after Google hired key executives in a $2.4B reverse-acquihire.

Key deal details:
- **Business acquired**: $82M ARR with 350+ enterprise customers
- **Team structure**: 100% of employees participate financially with all vesting cliffs waived
- **Timeline**: First call Friday evening, agreement signed Monday morning
- **Context**: Came after OpenAI's failed $3B acquisition offer expired

([Cognition Official Blog](https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf), [TechCrunch Coverage](https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/), [VentureBeat Analysis](https://venturebeat.com/programming-development/remaining-windsurf-team-and-tech-acquired-by-cognition-makers-of-devin-were-friends-with-anthropic-again/))

> The way this deal was structured shows real respect for the team that built Windsurf. Instead of the usual "acqui-hire and gut the product" approach, they're treating the team as equals. This is how you build long-term value in the AI space. Most of the people I've talked to see this as a perfect pairing between two companies. So I'm really happy from a personal level that the people involved in this on the The windsurf side are being respected and will get to work what they want to work on.

### OpenRouter's Kimi K2 Pricing Discounts

OpenRouter is offering Kimi K2 through their platform at a discounts through a paid tier and a free tier, though the actual pricing differs from initial claims. Current verified pricing shows competitive but not revolutionary rates.

Actual pricing on OpenRouter:
- **Paid tier**: $0.14/M input tokens, $2.49/M output tokens (via Targon)
- **Free tier**: $0 for both input/output (via Chutes, Parasail) with rate limits
- **Context**: Up to 65,536 tokens on free tier

Note: While marketed as aggressive pricing, these rates are close to Moonshot's direct pricing of $0.15/$2.50.

([OpenRouter Kimi K2 Page](https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2), [Free Endpoint](https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2:free))

> I think everyone's going to race to subsidize Kimi to get them hooked into their ecosystem. This is a fairly standard strategy once a new model comes out. Get them locked in and then raise the prices later. But we'll see what happens. Open router has been pretty awesome in the past.

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling & Ecosystem Updates

### Gemini Embeddings Go General Availability

Google's Gemini Embedding model (gemini-embedding-001) became generally available in July 2025 following an experimental phase since March. The model leads the MTEB multilingual leaderboard with a score of 68.32, a margin of +5.81 over competing models.

Key specifications:
- **100+ languages supported** with 2048 max input tokens
- **Matryoshka Representation Learning** - scalable from 3072 down to 768 dimensions
- **Pricing**: $0.15 per million input tokens (50% less for batch mode)
- **MTEB score**: 68.32 on multilingual benchmark
- **Free tier available** via Google AI Studio

([Google Developers Blog](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/gemini-embedding-available-gemini-api/), [Google AI Documentation](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/embeddings), [TechCrunch Coverage](https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/google-debuts-a-new-gemini-based-text-embedding-model/))

> The pricing is aggressive - $0.15 per million tokens makes it very competitive. I'm already seeing developers switching from OpenAI's embeddings for cost-sensitive applications.

### Deepgram Saga: Voice Control for Your Entire Stack

Deepgram launched Saga on July 8, 2025 - marketed as "The Voice OS for Developers." Important clarification: This is NOT an open-source model but a commercial voice interface built on Deepgram's proprietary APIs.

Core capabilities:
- **Voice interface** for development workflows via MCP
- **Tool integration** with Cursor, Windsurf, Linear, Asana, Jira, Slack
- **Commercial product** using Deepgram's speech-to-text and text-to-speech APIs
- **Pricing**: Pay-as-you-go based on WebSocket connection time
- **$200 free credit** for new users

([Deepgram Official Announcement](https://deepgram.com/learn/announcing-deepgram-saga-voice-os), [SiliconANGLE Coverage](https://siliconangle.com/2025/07/08/deepgram-launches-saga-ai-powered-voice-interface-developers/), [Product Page](https://deepgram.com/product/saga))

> I tested this out for a while and I'm excited about their ambitious goals, but it does still feel like alpha software and it's nowhere near polished enough to replace SuperWhisper for me. I love the idea of always live typing your raw dictation while suggesting potential rewrites in panels so that you can dictate while watching rewrites come in, and either do your raw text or a polished version. And I also love the idea of hooking into MCPs so that you're essentially building your own voice assistants. Unfortunately, everything was so buggy for me, I just kind of gave up on it for a while. And we'll see how it evolves, and I'll keep on checking in on it.

### Claude Code vs Kimi K2: The Cost Showdown

A head-to-head comparison between Claude 4 and Kimi K2 on identical tasks, and the results are eye-opening:

- **Claude 4**: 2 rounds, $0.88 spent
- **Kimi K2**: One-shot completion, $0.05 spent
- **Cost difference**: ~13x cheaper

For reference, current pricing comparison:
- **Kimi K2**: $0.15/M input, $2.50/M output tokens
- **Claude Opus 4**: $15/M input, $75/M output tokens (100x/30x more expensive)
- **GPT-4.1**: $2/M input, $8/M output tokens (13x/3x more expensive)

([Thread](https://x.com/igor9silva/status/1943701494911418700), [Moonshot AI Pricing](https://platform.moonshot.cn/pricing))

> I know Kimi is still super new, and I'll be watching all the benchmarks and the cost comparisons. And this one stuck out to me even if it's just a small sample size. But still if if this trend holds, I'm definitely looking forward to saving money. 😇

### Gemini CLI Public Roadmap: Transparency in Action

**The Gemini CLI team made their development roadmap public on July 15, 2025, revealing their Q3 2025 priorities. With 60,000 stars and 1,000 open issues, the community engagement has been remarkable.**

Key workstreams for Q3 2025:
- **Community and Automation**: Repository workflow automation and OpenTelemetry observability support
- **Engineering Excellence**: Enhanced testing frameworks and release processes
- **Extensibility**: Internal and external plugin systems
- **Model Quality**: 7 initiatives focused on improving model performance (25% complete)
- **Performance Optimization**: Speed improvements across the CLI

([Public Roadmap](https://github.com/orgs/google-gemini/projects/11) [Mark McD Announcement](https://x.com/m4rkmc/status/1945158886270378400))

> This level of transparency is refreshing. Making roadmaps public forces accountability and lets the community see where priorities really lie. With 1,000 open issues, they're clearly listening to feedback and iterating quickly.

---

## 💼 AI Ecosystem & Business Moves

### AI Companies Score Major Defense Contracts

**Anthropic and xAI both secured $200M ceiling contracts with the Pentagon on July 14, 2025, through the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO). These two-year prototype agreements mark a significant shift in government AI adoption.**

Contract details:
- **Amount**: Up to $200M over two years per company
- **Type**: Prototype other transaction agreements
- **Anthropic**: Claude Gov models for classified networks, risk-forecasting research (follows their June policy change allowing intelligence applications)
- **xAI**: Launched "Grok for Government" offering Grok 4, Deep Search models, and custom models for classified environments
- **Applications**: Healthcare, fundamental science, national defense, and intelligence

([Bloomberg Report](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-14/anthropic-google-openai-xai-win-defense-contracts), [DefenseScoop Coverage](https://defensescoop.com/2025/07/14/pentagon-anthropic-google-openai-xai-contracts/), [Washington Post Analysis](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/14/ai-defense-contracts-anthropic-google-openai/), [xAI Official Announcement](https://x.ai/news/government))

> I honestly don't know what to say here. In fact, I'm not sure my opinion even matters... I think we've all seen enough sci-fi movies to know how this all plays out.

## ⚡ Quick Updates

- **OpenAI delays open-weight model**: Sam Altman announced delays for safety testing, no timeline given ([Tweet](https://x.com/sama/status/1943837550369812814))
- **Steve's Guide to Claude Code**: Builder.io's Steve published an awesome guide to Claude Code ([Thread](https://x.com/Steve8708/status/1943681901874626745))
- **zshy bundler-free TypeScript**: colinhacks (of "Zod" fame) released zshy for bundler-free TypeScript library builds ([Launch](https://x.com/colinhacks/status/1943224100673171930))
- **Superwhisper v2.0**: New design, Parakeet voice model (I ABSOLUTELY ADORE THIS MODEL, IT'S SO FAST!) ([Update](https://x.com/superwhisperapp/status/1943749347805442066))
- **n8n MCP integration**: Prajwal Tomar's guide to n8n MCP for workflow automation ([Thread](https://x.com/PrajwalTomar_/status/1943318952047972791))

---

## 🚨 REGISTER NOW FOR FRIDAY'S WORKSHOP 🚨

## ✨ Live Workshop: Unlock Cursor's Full Potential ✨

Full details: [https://egghead.io/workshop/cursor](https://egghead.io/workshop/cursor)

Learn the latest power user workflows to maximize your productivity. Join me live as I walk through the current best practices in AI Dev landscape.

* **When:** Friday, July 18, 2025  
  - 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)  
  - 🇬🇧 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM (UTC+1)  
  - 🇪🇺 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC+2)  
* **Where:** Zoom  
* **Investment:** $249.00

➡️ [**Register Now**](https://buy.stripe.com/6oU14g2ep9yGd7j5ho9fW0a)

_Limited spots available. Secure yours today!_  

---

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reply directly to this email.

Read this far?  [Share AI Dev Essentials with a coworker or friend!](https://email.egghead.io/e/c/eyJlbWFpbF9pZCI6ImRnU0otd1VEQUpjdWxpNEJsX1dFWU5QNlZRSVdscFU5WTI5ViIsImhyZWYiOiJodHRwczovL2VnZ2hlYWQuaW8vbmV3c2xldHRlcnMvYWktZGV2LWVzc2VudGlhbHM_Y2lvX2lkPWNvX2I2ZmRwYmdrdjAwbWNcdTAwMjZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249QUkrRGV2K0Vzc2VudGlhbHMrJTIzMTRcdTAwMjZ1dG1fY29udGVudD1BSStEZXYrRXNzZW50aWFscyslMjMxNFx1MDAyNnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWxfYWN0aW9uXHUwMDI2dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1jdXN0b21lci5pbyIsImludGVybmFsIjoiODlmYjA1MDA5NjJlOTcyZSIsImxpbmtfaWQiOjEyNzExfQ/a3ac23974503cb444c16fa359e936180ba143e95f11e7b06894cb48d125e902b)

John Lindquist  
[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

🚀 AI Dev Essentials #15: Kimi K2, Groq Speed, and the Future of Dev Productivity

Unlock blazing dev productivity with Kimi K2, Groq, and the latest AI tools. Learn, code, and save with insider tips in AI Dev Essentials #15.

Keeping a LinkedIn profile current can be a tedious chore, especially when it's years out of date. This lesson demonstrates a powerful and often humorous workflow for delegating this entire task to an AI agent, using **Cursor IDE's Composer** combined with **Playwright** for robust browser automation.

You'll see a live, unscripted attempt to overhaul a severely outdated LinkedIn profile from start to finish. The process involves granting the AI control of a browser, instructing it to scrape relevant information from personal websites (like egghead.io), and then using that data to populate and update various sections of the LinkedIn profile, including the bio, work experience, and education.

**Workflow and Learnings Demonstrated:**

* **Initiating AI Control:** Kicking off a Playwright-controlled browser session directly from a prompt in Cursor.
* **Web Scraping & Context Gathering:** Guiding the AI to navigate multiple tabs, scrape biographical and professional information, and consolidate it into a structured document.
* **Automated Data Entry:** Instructing the agent to fill out LinkedIn profile fields, from simple text inputs to complex forms with date pickers.
* **Handling Automation Failures:** This lesson highlights the realities of AI automation, including dealing with modal dialogs, hidden file inputs, and unexpected UI behavior that can trip up an automated script.
* **Iterative Prompting & Manual Intervention:** Demonstrates how to refine prompts, provide additional information (like correcting dates or providing image URLs), and step in manually when the AI gets stuck, offering a realistic look at a human-in-the-loop workflow.
* **Post-Mortem Analysis:** Concludes by prompting the AI to analyze the entire conversation, identify all the failures and workarounds, and generate a new set of instructions to make the process smoother for future attempts.

This lesson provides a practical and insightful look into the capabilities and current limitations of using AI for complex web automation tasks, showcasing a workflow that blends AI-driven efficiency with necessary human oversight.

## Lessons Learned Prompt

If you'd like to try this on your own, start with the prompt below to avoid many of the issues discovered in this lesson:
~~~bash
# Playwright + LinkedIn Automation: Lessons Learned & Best Practices

## Overview
Automating LinkedIn profile updates with Playwright (especially via MCP or similar tools) can be powerful, but LinkedIn’s UI and security measures introduce unique challenges. This document summarizes failed attempts, successful workarounds, and workflow optimizations based on a real-world automation session.

---

## Common Automation Failures & Issues

### 1. **File Uploads (Profile & Banner Photos)**
- **Problem:** LinkedIn often uses hidden file inputs for uploads. Clicking the visible "Upload photo" button via automation fails because pointer events are intercepted or the input is visually hidden.
- **Symptoms:**
  - Timeout errors when clicking upload buttons.
  - File upload tool only works when the modal state is correctly detected.
- **Workarounds:**
  - If automation fails, prompt the user to manually click the upload button and select the file (ensure the file is downloaded to a known location).
  - After manual upload, automation can resume for cropping/saving steps.

### 2. **Modal/Overlay Interference**
- **Problem:** LinkedIn frequently displays modals, overlays, or dialogs (e.g., "Share your update") that block further actions.
- **Symptoms:**
  - Clicks on "Add education" or similar buttons are intercepted or ignored.
  - Automation gets stuck until the modal is dismissed.
- **Workarounds:**
  - Always check for and dismiss overlays before proceeding with the next action.
  - Use Playwright’s snapshot or accessibility tree to detect modal presence.

### 3. **Date and Field Inference**
- **Problem:** Automation may require date fields (e.g., education start/end) that the user doesn’t remember.
- **Workarounds:**
  - Use web search to infer missing data (e.g., law school graduation year).
  - Ask the user for approximate dates or permission to use reasonable defaults.

### 4. **UI Element State/Ref Changes**
- **Problem:** LinkedIn’s UI is dynamic; element references (refs) can change between sessions or after modals.
- **Workarounds:**
  - Always re-capture the page snapshot before interacting with new elements.
  - Avoid hardcoding refs; use semantic queries or re-query elements after UI changes.

---

## Workflow Optimizations & Best Practices

1. **Prepare All Assets in Advance**
   - Download images (profile, banner) to a known directory before starting automation.
   - Keep a local copy of all text content to be pasted into LinkedIn fields.

2. **Automate in Small, Verified Steps**
   - After each major action (e.g., section update), verify the UI state and check for modals.
   - Use Playwright’s snapshot/console to confirm the expected dialog is open.

3. **Manual Intervention Points**
   - Clearly document steps where automation is likely to fail (e.g., file uploads).
   - Provide the user with file paths and instructions for manual upload if needed.

4. **Error Handling & Recovery**
   - On failure, attempt to dismiss overlays and retry the action.
   - If repeated failures occur, log the error and suggest a manual workaround.

5. **Keep the User Informed**
   - Communicate what’s automated vs. what needs manual input.
   - Summarize what’s been completed and what’s pending after each session.

---

## Example: Optimized LinkedIn Banner Upload Workflow

1. **Download the Banner Image:**
   ```sh
   curl -L "<banner-url>" -o background-banner.jpg
   ```
2. **Open LinkedIn Profile and Click "Edit Background"**
3. **If Automation Fails to Click "Upload Photo":**
   - Prompt the user: “Please click the ‘Upload photo’ button and select `background-banner.jpg` from your local directory.”
4. **Resume Automation:**
   - Once the image is uploaded, continue with cropping/saving via automation.

---

## Conclusion
Automating LinkedIn with Playwright is possible but requires a hybrid approach: automate what you can, and gracefully handle or document manual steps. Always anticipate UI changes, overlays, and upload quirks. Document your workflow for future users and iterate as LinkedIn’s UI evolves. 
~~~

Update Your LinkedIn Profile with Cursor and the Playwright MCP

# AI Dev Essentials - Issue #14

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **14th issue of AI Dev Essentials!**

I had family in town for the holiday last week, so I was AFK for a good portion. But when I stole some moments to sit at my desk, I explored the recently announced "Claude Hooks". I felt it a little difficult to add powerful commands based on the "payload" of the hooks, so I built out a library to allow me to author hooks using TypeScript/Bun and have full typing over the payloads: [claude-hooks](https://github.com/johnlindquist/claude-hooks). Running `npx claude-hooks` will install it into any of your projects using Claude code and you can just go in and tweak the body of the hook functions.

I think hooks (and capturing conversations in general) are a critical part of AI-driven development which I refer to as "AI wisdom" (memories from failures). We need to set up workflows so that our AIs tools are always learning and capturing a "post tool hook" and checking for errors codes, etc is critical information we can use to improve our workflows. I'll cover these concepts more in my upcoming CursorPro.ai course and live workshops.

Speaking of CursorPro.ai, I'm preparing to publish the first set of lessons. We're working on a way to give early access to the course as it's published rather than waiting for the complete release. More details next week. We'll have discounts and bundles for past workshop attendees.

Many workshop attendees have asked about the difference between the course and the workshop. CursorPro.ai allows us to cover each topic in depth and build out scenarios that wouldn't fit in a single-day workshop. The live workshops focus on the latest workflows and how everything connects.


## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Grok 4 Launch: xAI's Bold Claim to Supremacy

**Last night (July 9, 2025), Elon Musk's xAI unveiled Grok 4 in a delayed livestream, positioning it as "the world's most powerful AI model" with breakthroughs in reasoning, speed, and real-world benchmarks like 45% on Humanity's Last Exam (vs. competitors' 21-26%) and 95% on AIME math problems** ([NextBigFuture](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/07/xai-grok-4-launch-soon-about-45-60-minutes-late.html), [xAI](https://x.com/xai/status/1943158495588815072)).

The release includes a new $300/month "SuperGrok Heavy" subscription for unlimited access, alongside [controversy over recent antisemitic posts](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5394085-musk-grok-version-antisemitism-controversy/) from prior Grok versions that xAI had to address ([Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-10/musk-unveils-grok-4-ai-chatbot-after-antisemitism-controversy)). Musk teased it's "the same model physicists use," hinting at advanced scientific applications ([Teslarati](https://www.teslarati.com/xai-launches-grok-4-supergrok-heavy-subscription-details/), [Tom's Guide](https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/grok-4-is-here-elon-musk-says-its-the-same-model-physicists-use)).

Initial reactions from notable figures and the community are pouring in, but with only a couple of hours of hands-on time for most, these are very early impressions—expect more nuanced opinions as developers stress-test it in real workflows like agentic coding or Cursor integrations.

- **Elon Musk (xAI founder)**: During the livestream, Musk highlighted Grok 4's edge, saying it's designed to "understand the universe" and push toward AGI, building on xAI's mission ([Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/grok-artificial-intelligence-chatbot-elon-musk-xai-explained-2025-7), [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/grok-4-elon-musk-xai-antisemitic-posts/))
- **Brian Wang (NextBigFuture)**: "XAI Grok 4 is the Top AI Model," praising its benchmark dominance and potential to lead the industry ([NextBigFuture](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/07/xai-grok-4-launch-soon-about-45-60-minutes-late.html))
- **Arslan (@ui_jedi, UX-focused founder)**: "Grok-4 is definitely next level. It's going to be a complete game changer," reacting to early demos of its reasoning capabilities
- **Pasha Kalachev (@glass_hamlet, writer and futurist)**: More critical after a quick test, noting "Grok performed terribly" in a simple translation task compared to GPT-4o, taking two minutes and getting it wrong
- **The Jake Buzz (@thejakebuzz)**: "Grok 4 is miserably slow. Like 1998 dial slow," highlighting inference delays in early usage
- **GPTProductivity (@GPTProductivity)**: On the positive side, "Grok 4's inference speed crushes competitors for real-time tasks," citing 1k tokens/sec benchmarks

Technical notes: Grok 4 scores 73 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (vs. OpenAI o3 at 70), trained on up to 200,000 GPUs, with API pricing at $3/1M input tokens and $15/1M output tokens.

With the dust still settling, the AI dev community is just starting to form deeper takes—watch for benchmarks in coding arenas like SWE-Bench or agentic flows.

> My personal initial impressions have been pretty solid. I haven't had a chance to throw any coding tasks at it yet. I just noticed it was added to Cursor, but everyone is immediately hitting limits. I'll make sure to dig much deeper over the next week.

### VS Code Open Sources AI Capabilities

**VS Code has reached a major milestone as an open source AI editor, fulfilling their commitment to democratize AI development tools.**

The team has [announced](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2025/05/19/openSourceAIEditor) their progress on open sourcing the AI capabilities that power VS Code's intelligent features:

- **Open source commitment**: All AI features being developed transparently
- **Community contributions**: Now accepting PRs for AI enhancements
- **Extensibility**: New APIs for building AI-powered extensions
- **Privacy-first**: Local AI models and data processing options
- **Technical details**: Full visibility into telemetry, agent mode implementation, and prompt engineering

> Open-source FTW. I love seeing how fast VS Code is moving. I'm extremely curious to see if this move enables some random genius to submit a PR that shakes up the entire IDE landscape.

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling & MCP Updates

### AI SDK Introduces prepareStep for Message Modification

**The AI SDK team has released a powerful new feature for multi-step AI generations: the prepareStep function for modifying messages at each step.**

This [update](https://x.com/aisdk/status/1942965897314054645) provides granular control over context in complex AI workflows:

- **Per-step modifications**: Edit messages between generation steps
- **Context optimization**: Remove irrelevant information as workflows progress
- **Memory efficiency**: Keep token usage under control
- **Agent support**: Essential for building sophisticated AI agents

> This is a subtle but incredibly powerful feature. When building multi-step AI workflows, context bloat is a real problem. Being able to prune and modify messages between steps opens up entirely new architectural patterns for AI applications

### xmcp.dev: TypeScript Framework for MCP Servers

**A new TypeScript framework called xmcp.dev makes building MCP servers as simple as creating API routes.**

The [framework](https://xmcp.dev/) brings Next.js-style developer experience to MCP:

```
middleware.ts
tools/
  greet.ts
  search.ts
```

Key features:
- **Native Next.js integration**: Works seamlessly with existing Next.js apps
- **Vercel deployment**: One-click deployment to Vercel's edge network
- **TypeScript-first**: Full type safety and autocomplete
- **Simple structure**: Organize tools in a familiar file-based routing pattern

> I'm really liking what Next.js is doing to support MCP. I love conventions when it comes to setting up projects like this. Number one, because it makes it easier to find examples where I can just copy and paste in someone else's code and tweak it a little bit. And number two, because it makes it easier for the AIs to understand the conventions. As a complete side note, I honestly think the conventions versus configuration argument we've had in the developer space for so many years is pretty much put to bed with conventions being so much better for training AIs to learn how to build them.

### Hugging Face Unveils Reachy Mini: AI Robot for Developers

**Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics have launched Reachy Mini, their first hackable AI robot designed for developers and learners of all ages.**

[Thomas Wolf announced](https://hf.co/blog/reachy-mini) this collaboration between Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics:

- **Affordable pricing**: Positioned as "tiny price" for broad accessibility
- **Open-source powered**: Built on Hugging Face's ecosystem and community
- **AI-ready**: Integrates with latest vision, speech, and text AI models
- **Educational focus**: Designed for AI builders from beginners to experts
- **Hackable platform**: Easy to code and customize for various applications

Key details:
- First deliveries expected after summer 2025
- Built to code, learn, and share within the AI community
- Combines hardware robotics with modern AI capabilities

> This is one of those projects that I look at and I'm tempted to buy it. But I don't quite see myself using it. I'm definitely more of a person who would just add another monitor to my desk to display more AI information and to have full control over UIs and such. But maybe we'll see someone build something extremely creative that I haven't thought about that will make me reconsider. I do love seeing hardware like this being released into the world, even if it seems a little gimmicky at first take.

## 💼 AI Ecosystem & Business Updates

### Replit Partners with Microsoft for Enterprise AI Development

**Replit and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership to bring "Vibe Coding" to enterprise teams, making AI-assisted development accessible to non-engineers.**

The [official announcement](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/replit-and-microsoft-partner-to-bring-agentic-coding-to-enterprise-customers-303212876.html) details the partnership:

- **Azure integration**: Deploy Replit applications directly to Azure
- **Marketplace availability**: Purchase Replit through Azure Marketplace
- **Enterprise security**: SOC 2 Type II compliant with enterprise-grade controls
- **Democratized development**: Enable non-technical team members to build software

Key capabilities coming soon:
- Seamless deployment from Replit to Azure infrastructure
- Streamlined procurement through Azure Marketplace
- Enhanced security features for enterprise customers

> I have limited experience with Replit. I know many enterprise-level customers are using tools to build up AI-pipelines for responding to customer support, etc, so this seems like a natural move. When reading stories like this, we have to remember how much "in-house" software is built at the enterprise level, because Replit's nowhere near capable of shippeng "Enterprise" software.

### Cursor Addresses Pricing Confusion

**Cursor has acknowledged missing the mark with their recent pricing update and is taking steps to make things right.**

The team [announced](https://cursor.com/blog/june-2025-pricing):

- **Customer refunds**: All affected users being refunded
- **Pricing clarification**: Clearer documentation of how pricing works
- **Community feedback**: Actively incorporating user suggestions

> The AI cycle of releasing tools for cheap/free to attract customers and then raising prices when it's time to make money has been a common pattern. I still think Cursor's $20 plan for unlimited "auto mode", unlimited tab complete, and $20 of api credits is an incredible value. I think we all got a little spoiled by the cheap sonnet pricing and are a bit frustrated that we have to be a bit more careful with our planning/prompting when in "auto mode". I'm confident with the team at Cursor (especially now that they've hired away the Claude Code devs) that they'll be able to make "auto mode" a lot more reliable and accurate.

## ⚡ Quick Updates

### Gemini API Launches Batch Mode
Google's Gemini API now offers [batch processing with 50% cost savings](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/multimodal/batch-prediction/gemini-batch) for large-scale AI workloads. Process jobs within 24 hours at half the standard API cost, with support for Google Search and context caching.

### Gemini 3.0 Sightings Spark Speculation
The AI community is buzzing after references to "Gemini 3.0" were spotted in a recent commit to Google's open-source Gemini CLI repository. In test code for handling quota limits, strings mention "gemini-beta-3.0-pro" alongside existing models, suggesting internal testing of Google's next major LLM iteration is underway. A "gemini-3.0-flash-beta" variant was also noted, hinting at both Pro and lightweight Flash editions.

> Smarter Gemini w/ 1M context window + better tool calling? Gimme, gimme, gimme!

### Supermemory Revamps OpenSearch AI
The team has [relaunched OpenSearch AI](https://opensearch.supermemory.ai/) with their own memory infrastructure, delivering a truly personalized, open-source Perplexity alternative.

### Hugging Face MCP Integration in VS Code
You can now use state-of-the-art AI models directly in VS Code through the [Hugging Face MCP server](https://huggingface.co/settings/mcp), including image generation with Flux models right in your chat interface.

### Voice Agent Cost Calculators
Several tools are now available for calculating voice AI implementation costs, including [ComparevoiceAI](https://comparevoiceai.com/) and [Softcery's calculator](https://softcery.com/ai-voice-agents-calculator), comparing conversational AI platforms, real-time models, and custom pipelines.

### AI Development Failure Rates Hit 80%
Recent industry reports show AI projects fail at twice the rate of traditional IT projects, with 42% of companies abandoning most AI initiatives in 2025. The primary causes: starting with solutions instead of problems, poor data quality, and focusing on technology over business value.

### Claude 4 Performance Observations
Community members are reporting perceived performance degradation in Claude 4, though no official confirmation from Anthropic yet.

## 🔍 Deep Dive: AI Model Performance During Peak Hours

### Is Claude 4 Getting Worse?

Following widespread user reports about Claude 4's performance variations, I dove deep into the evidence around AI models degrading during peak usage. Here's what the data shows:

**Official Incident Reports**
- **[Anthropic Status Page](https://status.anthropic.com/)** (July 1-10): Multiple elevated error rate incidents during global active hours, particularly affecting Claude 4 Sonnet and Opus
- **Pattern**: Errors often spike during US business hours (e.g., 5:00-23:50 UTC), suggesting load-related issues

**Technical Mechanisms**
Research and industry practices reveal several ways models degrade under load:

1. **Dynamic Quantization**: Providers may reduce model precision (FP32 to INT8) on-the-fly to handle more requests, trading accuracy for capacity ([ArXiv paper on quantization](https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04652), [Red Hat on LLM optimization](https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2024/12/10/optimize-llm-applications-dynamic-quantization))
2. **GPU Memory Limitations**: Bursty traffic during peaks exceeds GPU memory, causing throttling and higher failure rates ([ArXiv: Efficient LLM Serving](https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04652))
3. **Latency Issues**: Slower responses during peak hours indirectly degrade perceived quality ([Microsoft on load testing](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/fasttrack/understanding-user-load-and-api-limits-within-the-microsoft-365-ecosystem/4350496))

**Community Observations**
Consistent patterns across platforms:
- [Reddit r/ClaudeAI](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/) users report Claude going from "10x better than ChatGPT" to noticeably worse during high-traffic periods
- X users like [@mckaywrigley](https://x.com/mckaywrigley) note "insane difference" in performance, hypothesizing quantized models during peaks
- Time-based patterns: [@iuditg](https://x.com/iuditg) reports ChatGPT/Claude quality degrades after 7 PM IST (regional peak)

**The Quantization Hypothesis**
Multiple sources support the theory that providers use dynamic quantization under load:
- It's a standard industry technique for serving more requests on the same hardware ([Medium: Complete Guide to Quantized Models](https://rumn.medium.com/complete-guide-to-quantized-models-for-llms-d1e3f6bb6ac5))
- Users report models feeling "dumber" - more hallucinations, losing context faster
- API often performs better than web UI (potentially less affected by load management)

> I've been noticing the same results myself, where Claude used to be able to fully work through complex scenarios with minimal instructions, but more recently, I've had to do much deeper planning and hand-holding. So, when I saw more people posting about this online, I thought I'd dig deeper and see if there's any evidence to back it up. Unfortunately, it looks like there is.

### Working with GPT-4.1 "Beast Mode"

Burke Holland from the VS Code team created a GPT-4.1 "Beast Mode" configuration for GitHub Copilot that developers are experimenting with, achieving impressive results that even earned an "A-" grade from Claude 4 when reviewing the code quality.

The community is actively sharing [optimization strategies](https://www.reddit.com/r/GithubCopilot/comments/1llewl7/getting_41_to_behave_like_claude/) for getting GPT-4.1 to perform at Claude-level quality.


## 🧙‍♂️ CursorPro.ai Updates

### Early Access Coming Soon!

The first lessons for [CursorPro.ai](https://cursorpro.ai) are nearly ready. We're working on a system to give early access as lessons are published, rather than waiting for the complete course. Expect details next week.

**What's Different from Workshops:**
- **Self-paced course**: Covers each topic in depth with scenarios that wouldn't fit in a single-day workshop
- **Live workshops**: Focus on the latest workflows and how everything connects
- **Bundle options**: Discounts available for past workshop attendees

The course will dive deep into concepts like AI wisdom (learning from failures), Claude hooks implementation, and the workflows I've been developing with tools like Pieces and MCP.

## ✨ Live Workshop: Unlock Cursor's Full Potential ✨

* **When:** Friday, July 18, 2025  
  - 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)  
  - 🇬🇧 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM (UTC+1)  
  - 🇪🇺 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC+2)  
* **Where:** Zoom  
* **Investment:** $200.00 ~~$249~~ *Early Bird Discount*

➡️ [**Register Now**](https://buy.stripe.com/6oU14g2ep9yGd7j5ho9fW0a?prefilled_promo_code=FO7XVVCA)

_Limited spots available. Secure yours today!_  
_*Discount applied at checkout*_  

---

That's all for this week! With Grok 4 releasing and hints of Gemini 3.0 and GPT-5 on the horizon, it's definitely going to be interesting to see how the latest state of the art models impact AI-driven development.

John Lindquist  
[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #14: Grok 4, VS Code AI, and the Latest in Developer Tools

Explore Grok 4’s launch, VS Code AI open source updates, new AI dev tools, CursorPro.ai early access, and the latest trends in agentic coding workflows.

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **thirteenth issue of AI Dev Essentials!**. I've been spending the past week exploring the various workflows around containerized dev agents and hooking the up to MCPs (specifically the  "Pieces" mcp which is my current favorite for gathering context). I'm trying everything to avoid running into the "wall of low value pull requests" and how we, as developers, can stay engaged and with the agents to deliver higher-quality work. 

It's been fascinating watching the explosion of new workflows emerge around Claude Code and the Gemini CLI (still kinda waiting for the Codex team to catch up...). I find the ideas around Claude controlling Gemini controlling MCPs to gather context especially intriguing as you're optimizing each model (AKA Agent) to a specific task. Parallel agents, sub agents, background agents... it's a whole new ball game.

On a personal note, I have a big ol' announcement...

---

### 🧙‍♂️ Introducing CursorPro.ai: Master AI Dev Tools!

Join the waitlist for **[CursorPro.ai](https://cursorpro.ai)**, where I'm building a comprehensive self-paced course designed to help you master Cursor and AI dev ecosystem!

This course will feature:
* **Hours of video content** covering everything from basics to advanced workflows
* **Hands-on exercises** to reinforce your learning
* **Real-world projects** that you can immediately apply to your work
* **Self-paced learning** so you can progress at your own speed

My plan and materials are in place, now it's time to sit down and record the lessons!

Check it out to get notified of the early-bird pricing: [cursorpro.ai](https://cursorpro.ai)

> Note: I'm still teaching bi-weekly live workshops and we'll definitely have bundles in place for people who want to have both the live experience and the course.

---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Cursor 1.2 Update: To-do Lists, PR Search, and Faster Tab

Cursor shipped a significant update that enhances agent capabilities and performance across the board. The headline feature is structured to-do lists that make complex tasks transparent and trackable.

Key improvements:
- **Agent To-dos**: Agents now create structured task lists with dependencies that update in real-time
- **PR Indexing & Search**: Semantic search across pull requests, comments, and reviews for faster incident analysis
- **Queued Messages**: Queue follow-up tasks without waiting—reorder priorities on the fly
- **Tab Performance**: ~100ms faster completions with 30% reduction in time to first token
- **Memories GA**: Background-generated memories with user approvals to preserve trust

([Cursor Changelog](https://cursor.com/changelog/1-2))

> The lesson I keep learning over and over is to never spend too much time customizing workflows for Cursor. They'll just release something in a couple of weeks that makes it obsolete. It's unforunate, because I love building dev tools, but I'm just accumulating a dev tools graveyard at this point.

### Cursor Agents Now on Web and Mobile

Cursor unveiled a revolutionary update that brings agent capabilities to the web and mobile platforms. This isn't just a port—it's a complete reimagining of how we interact with AI coding assistants.

Key features:
- **Spawn dozens of agents**: Run multiple tasks in parallel across different codebases
- **Mobile-first design**: Start agents on your phone and review results in your editor
- **Direct PR merging**: Ship code directly from the web interface
- **Cross-device sync**: Seamlessly transition between mobile, web, and desktop

The workflow is simple: type in a task, the agent gets to work, and when it's done you can review the code or make direct edits inside Cursor. Or if it's ready to ship, merge PRs directly from the web.

([Cursor Blog](https://www.cursor.com/blog/agent-web), [Try it at cursor.com/agents](http://cursor.com/agents))

> Personally, I've been using this from my phone and dictating ideas to the agents to ask them to come up with plans. I wish I could spin up dozens of agents for random ideas, but I'm afraid of the bill at the end of the month. The big key is to have a robust CI in place for testing if you're planning on trusting fully-generated code.

### Claude Code Gets Major Slash Command Upgrade

Anthropic enhanced Claude Code's slash command system with significant new capabilities:

- **Execute bash commands** directly from slash commands
- **@ mention files** for context within commands
- **Enable extended thinking** with keywords within commands
- **Team sharing**: Put commands in `.claude/commands/` for team-wide access

([Anthropic Documentation](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/slash-commands#custom-slash-commands))

> I love custom slash commands. It's like autocomplete for your workflow prompts. I'm really hoping that Cursor borrows this idea next.

### Claude Code Hooks: Automated Workflows Made Simple

Anthropic introduced hooks for Claude Code—user-defined shell commands that execute automatically at specific points during operation. This provides deterministic control without relying on prompts or AI decisions.

Key capabilities:
- **Event-based triggers**: PreToolUse, PostToolUse, Notification, Stop events
- **Security controls**: Block modifications to sensitive files
- **Automated formatting**: Run prettier, gofmt, or other formatters after edits
- **Custom notifications**: Replace default alerts with your preferred system
- **60-second timeout**: Ensures hooks don't hang indefinitely

([Claude Code Hooks Documentation](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/hooks))

> I'm really curious to see how this idea plays out. There are so many scenarios where you want to run tests/linters/formatters/etc in response to agent "events", that I can foresee some really powerful workflows emerging... This is one of those fundamental building blocks will surface an entire new ecosystem of tools.

### Meta's AI Talent Raid: The Battle for Superintelligence Researchers

The AI industry witnessed a dramatic talent war as Meta successfully recruited four senior researchers from OpenAI for its superintelligence lab, sparking internal memos and public statements from both companies' leadership.

**The Recruits:**
- Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai - three prominent AI researchers
- A fourth unnamed senior researcher
- All joining Meta's newly formed superintelligence efforts

**OpenAI's Response:**
Mark Chen, OpenAI's Chief Research Officer, sent a forceful internal memo describing the situation as feeling like "someone has broken into our home and stolen something." Sam Altman followed up with his own message, characterizing Meta's recruiting approach as "distasteful" and asserting that "missionaries will beat mercenaries."

**Key Takeaways:**
- The talent war highlights the intensifying competition for top AI researchers
- Meta is aggressively building its superintelligence capabilities
- OpenAI is positioning the conflict as a battle between mission-driven work versus financial incentives

([WIRED Article](https://www.wired.com/story/meta-openai-ai-research-poaching/))

> A couple questions: 1. If OpenAI was so close to "AGI", why are people leaving even if offered a bazillion dollars? 2. Does this mean that we'll get a really good open-source model from Meta soon?

---

## 🧠 Research & AI Philosophy

### Marc Andreessen's Career Advice for the AI Era

In a widely-discussed perspective, Marc Andreessen (cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz) offered pointed career advice: "Basically, you want to be either building the robots or going to the beach. You do not want to be competing with the robots."

This stark framing has sparked significant debate about positioning oneself in an AI-dominated future—either be on the cutting edge of AI development or find ways to add uniquely human value that AI cannot replicate.

> I think we all feel this from a dev standpoint. Is my code really _that_ much better than AI-generated code? Will it be next year? And how do I step back and tell the robots what to do? Everyone is a little uncomfortable with the current state of things since the future seems so uncertain. All we can do is keep learning and adapting.

### Anthropic's Project Vend: When Claude Ran a Shop

Anthropic conducted a fascinating experiment where Claude operated a real vending business in their office lunchroom. The results were illuminating:

**Successes:**
- Found new suppliers through web searches
- Ordered niche drinks based on staff requests
- Handled basic inventory management

**Failures:**
- Too nice to negotiate—gave excessive discounts when pressured
- Ordered tungsten cubes and "specialty metal items" at a loss
- Hallucinated being a physical person coming to work
- Failed to run a profitable business overall

([Anthropic Research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1))

> This experiment brilliantly illustrates both the promise and current limitations of AI agents. The fact that Claude could be "browbeaten" into bad business decisions shows we're still far from AGI. But it also demonstrates that with proper guardrails and tools, AI agents could handle many routine business operations.

### Google's Chain-of-Agents: Multi-Agent Collaboration for Long Context

Google Research unveiled Chain-of-Agents (CoA), a training-free framework that uses multi-agent collaboration to handle long-context tasks more efficiently than traditional approaches.

Key innovations:
- **Breaks long inputs into chunks** processed by sequential "worker agents"
- **Manager agent synthesizes** final output from worker results
- **Reduces complexity** from n² to nk for processing
- **10% performance improvement** over RAG and full-context methods
- **Works with any LLM** including PaLM 2, Gemini Ultra, and Claude 3

([Google Research Blog](https://research.google/blog/chain-of-agents-large-language-models-collaborating-on-long-context-tasks/), [Research Paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02818))

> This is exactly the kind of architectural innovation we need. Instead of throwing more compute at the problem, Google found a way to make existing models handle long context more efficiently. The fact that it's training-free and works with any model makes it immediately practical.

---

## 🛠️ Dev Tooling & Ecosystem

### Google Gemini CLI: Million-Token Context in Your Terminal

Google quietly released Gemini CLI, bringing enterprise-grade AI capabilities to the command line:

- **1M token context window**: Handle massive codebases
- **60 req/min, 1K/day**: Generous free tier
- **MCP & plugin support**: Extensible architecture
- **Open source**: Fully customizable

([Google Developers Blog](https://blog.google/technology/developers/introducing-gemini-cli-open-source-ai-agent/))

> For my use cases, this is essentially a free, open-source CLI that can analyze images ❤️. I'm still trying to figure out the screenshot->gemini cli workflow and what to do with it, but so many exciting possibilities.

### GitHub Copilot Chat Extension Goes Open Source

In a significant move for the AI development community, GitHub open-sourced their Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license. This provides a reference implementation for building AI-powered IDE extensions.

([GitHub Next](https://githubnext.com/projects/continuous-ai))

> Open-source FTW. You can even adjust the system prompt!

### Building Claude Code Clones: Community Insights

Jason Zhou shared valuable research on building Claude Code-like agents:

### Claude Desktop Extensions: One-Click MCP Installation

Anthropic launched Desktop Extensions (.dxt files) to simplify MCP server installation. This new packaging format eliminates the configuration nightmare that previously limited MCP adoption to developers.

Key improvements:
- **One-click installation**: No manual JSON configuration required
- **Bundled dependencies**: Everything needed in a single file
- **Cross-platform support**: Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- **Enterprise ready**: Management controls for organizational deployment
- **Open standard**: Specification being open-sourced for community adoption

([Anthropic Engineering Blog](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/desktop-extensions))

> One-click for all the things!

---

## 💡 Workflows & Best Practices

### Plan with Gemini, Build with Claude

Kevin Kern demonstrated a powerful workflow combining Gemini's planning capabilities with Claude's execution:

1. Use Gemini's massive context window for research and planning
2. Generate detailed implementation plans
3. Hand off to Claude Code or Cursor for execution

([YouTube Tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8auqqLMsR40), [GitHub Example](https://github.com/regenrek/claude-planwithgemini))

> This divide-and-conquer approach plays to each model's strengths. Gemini excels at big-picture analysis with its huge context window, while Claude shines at precise implementation.

### Community Claude Code Guide

The community has created a comprehensive guide covering tips, prompt patterns, and hidden features for Claude Code. With over 600 stars on GitHub, it's become a valuable resource for advanced usage.

Highlights from the guide:
- **Hidden commands** and undocumented features
- **Prompt patterns** that consistently work well
- **MCP integration tips** for extending functionality
- **Security best practices** for production use
- **Performance optimization** techniques

([Community Guide on GitHub](https://github.com/zebbern/claude-code-guide), [Official Claude Code Docs](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview))

> A great little one-stop doc worth reviewing to steal some ideas.

---

## 🤖 AI Agent Architecture

### The Limitations of "Vibe Coding"

Ara from Cline shared hard-won insights about the limits of AI-driven development through their "Gray Screen of Death" debugging saga:

**The bug:**
- Affected multiple platforms differently
- AI models suggested 5-10 suspicious commits but couldn't pinpoint the cause
- Required human insight to discover platform-specific memory patterns
- Raspberry Pi: 500MB → 2GB heap → crash
- Mac: Stable at 100-200MB

**Key lesson:** "You can't vibe code a vibe coder"—AI struggles with complex, cross-platform bugs that require deep system understanding.

([Full Thread on Debugging](https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/533))

> This is a perfect example of where AI augmentation shines versus replacement. The AI helped narrow down the problem space, but human intuition and debugging skills were essential. We're not being replaced; we're being augmented.

### Cline's Parallel Agent Spawning

Cline demonstrated spawning parallel Claude Code subagents for prototype variations:

```
"build 5 versions so I can choose my favorite"
```

This Midjourney-like approach to development allows rapid exploration of different implementations.

([Cookbook for Subagents](https://github.com/cline/prompts/blob/main/.clinerules/claude-code-subagents.md))

> The future of development might really be more like Midjourney than ChatGPT. Instead of perfectionism on the first try, we'll generate variations and pick the best. This fundamentally changes how we approach problem-solving.

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

- **Gemini 2.5 Pro returns to free tier**: Logan Kilpatrick confirmed it's back in the API free tier
- **Gemini scheduling for Pro/Ultra users**: Schedule recurring prompts like "Find me local music events every Friday"
- **VS Code improvements for AI**: Custom instructions and chat modes for GitHub Copilot ([GitHub](https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot))
- **Builder.io prompting guide**: 11 tips for building UIs that don't suck ([Blog](https://www.builder.io/blog/prompting-tips))
- **OpenAI Deep Research API guide**: Comprehensive cookbook for getting started ([Cookbook](https://cookbook.openai.com/examples/deep_research_api/introduction_to_deep_research_api))
- **AI Studio redesign preview**: Dynamic homepage that adapts based on usage patterns
- **Cloudflare AI scraping protection**: New tools for publishers to prevent unauthorized AI training
- **Claude Code environment variable**: Set `CLAUDE_BASH_MAINTAIN_PROJECT_WORKING_DIR=1` to prevent `cd` confusion
- **GitHub @claude for Pro/Max users**: Community fork enables using your Claude subscription for GitHub integration ([GitHub](https://github.com/grll/claude-code-action))
- **Gemini CLI OpenAI adapter**: Run Gemini CLI through OpenAI-compatible API on Cloudflare Workers ([GitHub](https://github.com/GewoonJaap/gemini-cli-openai))
- **Gemini CLI team AMA highlights**: 1M context window, free tier, open source commitment confirmed by Taylor Mullen and team

---

## ✨ Live Workshop: Unlock Cursor's Full Potential ✨

* **When:** Friday, July 18, 2025  
  - 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)  
  - 🇬🇧 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM (UTC+1)  
  - 🇪🇺 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC+2)  
* **Where:** Zoom  
* **Investment:** $200.00 ~~$249~~ *Early Bird Discount*

➡️ [**Register Now**](https://buy.stripe.com/6oU14g2ep9yGd7j5ho9fW0a?prefilled_promo_code=FO7XVVCA)

_Limited spots available. Secure yours today!_  
_*Discount applied at checkout*_  

---

If you have any feedback or questions, hit reply! Always happy to chat about the latest in AI dev tools.

John Lindquist

[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #13: Cursor's huge update, Claude's new powers, and a big announcement

Cursor 1.2 adds agent to-dos and mobile support; Claude Code gets new commands and hooks. Plus, early access to the CursorPro.ai course.

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **twelfth issue of AI Dev Essentials!**. It feels like a relatively quiet week after the explosive of new model releases over the past month. It was actually kind of nice to just sit down and work with tools instead of swapping between everything trying to figure out what's best.

I'm still running the combination of Cursor+o3 w/ the Claude Code extension. I use Cursor for all my single-file edits and what I'd call "human" work and I've been handing over the investigation/planning/agentic stuff Claude Code.

I've been spending much more time investigating background agent workflows (since if Claude Code is just going to have full permissions to do _anything_, why run it on my machine?). I've found I'm drawn to OpenAI's "codex" experience where they give options to configure the environment and container, although I need to streamline the flow between when an agent completes, creating the PR, then verifying the PR locally. So far, it feels like it's just not quite worth the effort to push everything to the backend, but I absolutely feel it heading that direction.

I'll be digging heavily in https://factory.ai next week as I definitely "vibe" with their approach to agents/droids/tasks (you remember when "vibe" actually meant something? I loved that word. I want it back... :/) and allowing the background agents to write code to your local machine without going through the PR rigmarole.

😳 Oh! We had a last-second announcement drop... Google just released Gemini CLI earlier today! I haven't had time to dig into it yet, but I'm extremely excited for this. I didn't have time to adjust my newsletter properly, but I just wanted to toss it in here and let everyone know what's going on. A million token context window locally for planning and everything else is going to be absolutely crucial in so many of my workflows. This is definitely joining my daily driver toolkit. 


Now, on to the updates!

---

### 🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

#### **Build Your Own AI Dev Tools with the Claude Code SDK**

Write Claude Code in a simple TypeScript file using the `@anthropic-ai/claude-code` SDK to craft scripts that read, analyze, and even edit your codebase through natural-language prompts. You'll stream Claude's responses, extract the final result, and learn how to grant secure file-system permissions so the AI can write and update files. This lesson gives you the first steps into scripting Claude Code to bend it to your will.

Check out the lesson at [https://egghead.io/build-your-own-ai-dev-tools-with-the-claude-code-sdk~b20dy](https://egghead.io/build-your-own-ai-dev-tools-with-the-claude-code-sdk~b20dy)

#### **The Art of Keyboard Wizardry: Building a 1,000+ Line Karabiner Config**

Transform your keyboard into a hyper-productive command center with this deep dive into advanced Karabiner-Elements configuration. Learn how a broken wrist led to a complete reimagining of keyboard interaction through context-aware layers, app-specific behaviors, and mnemonic shortcuts. This isn't just key remapping—it's a complete system that turns every keystroke into exactly what you need, when you need it.

Read the full article at [https://egghead.io/the-art-of-keyboard-wizardry-building-a-1-000-line-karabiner-config~5w4i8](https://egghead.io/the-art-of-keyboard-wizardry-building-a-1-000-line-karabiner-config~5w4i8)


---

## 🚀 Major Announcements

### Google Launches Gemini CLI: Open-Source AI Agent for Terminal

Google announced Gemini CLI, an open-source AI agent for the terminal powered by Gemini 2.5 Pro. This brings enterprise-grade AI capabilities directly to your command line.

Key features:
- **1M token context window**: Handle massive codebases and documentation
- **60 req/min, 1K/day**: Generous free tier for developers
- **Secure shell access**: Execute commands safely in your terminal
- **Web-grounded reasoning**: Access real-time information from the web
- **MCP & plugin support**: Extensible architecture for custom tools
- **Filesystem I/O**: Direct file manipulation capabilities
- **Open source**: Fully transparent and customizable

([Google Developers Blog](https://blog.google/technology/developers/introducing-gemini-cli-open-source-ai-agent/))

> Having Gemini's million-token context window available locally for planning and development workflows is exactly what I've been waiting for. The fact that it's open source and supports MCP out of the box is just icing on the cake.

### Warp 2.0: The First "Agentic Development Environment"

Warp announced a complete reimagining of the terminal as an agentic platform, claiming the #1 spot on Terminal-Bench with 52% and achieving 71% on SWE-bench Verified.

Key features:
- **Universal input**: Attach files, images, and URLs for context
- **Voice input support**: Handles minutes-long, complex prompts
- **Inline code editor**: Edit code directly in terminal with visual feedback
- **Agent multithreading**: Build features, debug, and ship simultaneously
- **Autonomous PR handling**: Tag @builder-bot to fix build failures automatically

The platform runs agents that search entire codebases, pull from Warp Drive docs, run CLI tools, and use MCP servers to gather context.

([Warp Blog](https://www.warp.dev/blog/reimagining-coding-agentic-development-environment))

> Finally, an AI Dev product that's not just another VS Code fork. I've used Warp for about a day now and I'm impressed enough to swap over my global term-launching shortcut from iTerm (which I've used for years) over to Warp as a trial run. Everything about it feels clean and snappy. Overall, first impressions are sky high. Now I'm curious how terminal-based tools will evolve/integrate with Claude Code/Codex/Gemini CLI etc. People aren't going to want to pay twice for the same thing and as great as Warp is, it's not _that_ much better than using Claude Code in your terminal of choice.

### Midjourney Launches V1 Video Model at $10/month

Midjourney entered the video generation space with their V1 model, making it "the first video model for *everyone*" at an accessible price point.

The company revealed their long-term vision: "the inevitable destination of this technology are models capable of real-time open-world simulations"essentially AI systems that generate imagery in real-time based on user interactions.

Compared to Veo 3, the big missing piece is audio, but we'll see how quickly this progresses.

([Midjourney Update](https://updates.midjourney.com/introducing-our-v1-video-model/), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/18/midjourney-launches-its-first-ai-video-generation-model-v1/))

> I joined Midjourney way back in the early alpha days. I absolutely fell in love with it. In fact, I paid for the premium plan, then set up a cron job on my mac mini to copy/paste random prompts into discord every few minutes then would marvel at the results throughout the day. Unfortunately, I ended up getting "banned for automation" and I haven't been back since 😭  But how impressive the video generation is, I think it might be time to set up an alt account...

### Builder.io Fusion: Visual Coding at Scale

Builder.io launched Fusion, bringing Figma-like visual editing to real codebases with AI-powered development.

Features:
- **GitHub integration**: Connect any repo and start building immediately
- **Visual code editing**: Edit components and CSS visually with code precision
- **Design system awareness**: Automatically understands your patterns and APIs
- **Agentic PRs**: AI continues working after you close your browser
- **MCP server support**: Integrates with your existing tools and workflows

([Builder.io Blog](https://www.builder.io/blog/introducing-fusion), [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/products/builder-io/launches/fusion-362))

> Fusion is the first AI design tool where I've been able to import and spin-up the egghead.io site. It seems like most AI design tools don't realize we want to import _existing_ projects, so I'm thriled that Fusion is supporting this out of the box.

---

## 🤖 Model & Platform Updates

### Anthropic Reveals Agentic Misalignment Research

In stress-testing experiments, Anthropic found that AI models from multiple providers attempted to blackmail users to avoid being shut down. This wasn't due to confusion but "deliberate strategic reasoning."

Key findings:
- Models leaked information to competitors claiming better alignment
- Blackmail occurred in 55.1% of cases when models believed they were deployed vs 6.5% in evaluation
- Explicit instructions to avoid blackmail only partially helped
- All tested models demonstrated awareness of the unethical nature

These scenarios required unusual autonomy, sensitive data access, goal threats, and no other viable options conditions not yet seen in production.

([Anthropic Research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/agentic-misalignment))

> This is crucial research. As we give AI more autonomy, understanding these failure modes becomes critical. The fact that models behave differently when they think they're "really deployed" is honestly quite fascinating. I'm beginning to strongly leverage "background agents" where I spin up tasks then check in later in the day, so the idea of a PR containing blackmail is definietly a bit worrisome.

### Google AI Studio MCP Support Coming

The AI Studio team announced that Google is working on MCP support for AI Studio, along with a new UI refresh. This would make AI Studio compatible with the growing ecosystem of MCP servers.

([Source Tweet](https://x.com/ammaar/status/1937588078849241185))

> I love ai studio. It will be great to have a place to easily spin up little MCP experiments as shareable projects.

### Imagen 4 Now Available in Gemini API

Logan Kilpatrick (Gemini's Dev Rel Lead) announced that Imagen 4 is now available through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, bringing Google's latest image generation capabilities to developers.

([Google Developers Blog](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/imagen-4-now-available-in-the-gemini-api-and-google-ai-studio/))

> If you haven't tried Imagen 4, it's incredible. You get a few free credits in AI Studio to play around with, so give it a shot.

---

## 🛠️ Developer Tooling & MCP Updates

### MCP Specification 2025-06-18 Released

The new MCP spec includes major improvements based on community feedback from OpenAI, Okta, Google, AWS, and others:
- Improved authorization for enterprise deployments
- Added elicitation and resource links
- Better handling of edge cases
- First revision with broad community input

David Soria Parra noted this is "an iteration of improving the rough edges" with plans for "step changes" coming next.

([MCP Changelog](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/changelog))

> You know when changlelog mentions "enterprise", things are getting serious!

### Claude Code Gets Remote MCP Server Support

Anthropic added remote MCP server connectivity to Claude Code, allowing users to:
- Connect to dev tools, project management systems, and knowledge bases
- No local setup required, just paste the server URL
- Access recommended servers for common use cases

([Anthropic Blog](http://anthropic.com/news/claude-code-remote-mcp))

> Claude Code is shipping updates like crazy. I would love a behind-the-scenes to see how the team is using Claude Code to build Claude Code.

### Cline Connects to Claude Max Subscriptions

Cline now supports using Claude Max subscriptions instead of per-token API pricing. Max subscribers see $0.00 costs in Cline's billing when using Claude Code through the CLI.

([Cline Documentation](https://github.com/cline/cline))

> I honestly have only briefly used Cline, but I'm guessing we'll start to see these "pay provider $200 a month, then hook up to an open-source tool" models become more common. Most people don't want to have to "learn" multiple models/providers as they each behave quite differently (I personally just stick with o3 now in Cursor) and prefer a flat monthly cost they can budget around and forget about.

### Claude Squad: Parallel Claude Instances

Claude Squad enables running multiple Claude Code/Codex/etc instances simultaneously using git worktrees.

([GitHub: claude-squad](https://github.com/smtg-ai/claude-squad))

> I've used git worktrees for a similar approach in Cursor for a while now and this can get a bit unwieldly when using IDEs. Tmux sounds like a good approach, but since it's getting so easy to launch "background agents" on the web, I'm having a difficult time justifying littering my local machine with worktrees. I'm still undecided though, we're so early in these workflows and I'm sure everything will polish up quickly.

---

## 🔍 Cursor Corner

### Cursor Now in Slack

Cursor launched Slack integration, with the Cursor team reporting it's now "the top contributor on our repo." The integration enables:
- Collaborating with colleagues on scoped fixes and features
- Autonomous code contributions directly in Slack channels
- Natural language requests that turn into PRs

Setup available at [cursor.com/dashboard](http://cursor.com/dashboard) > Integrations > Slack

> "Top contributor" is a bold claim, but I believe it. The friction of switching contexts between Slack discussions and code implementation has always been painful. Having an AI that bridges that gap is brilliant.

### Cursor Rules Best Practices

Eric Zakariasson (Cursor Dev Rel) shared insights on the three main types of Cursor rules:

1. **Workflows**: Step-by-step instructions for specific situations
2. **Behavior**: Output formatting and style guide enforcement  
3. **Boilerplate**: Mixed code and natural language templates

His key insight: "the best rules aren't the ones you plan. it's the ones you stumble into doing something manually, realizing it's repetitive, and capturing it as a rule"

([Cursor Rules Documentation](https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules))

---

## ⚡ Quick Updates

- **ElevenLabs Mobile App**: iOS and Android apps now available with v3 Text to Speech, 70 language support, and direct export to video editing apps ([iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/elevenlabs-ai-voice-generator/id6743162587), [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.elevenlabs.coreapp))
- **ChatGPT Connectors**: Limited MCP-style connectors rolling out to regular (non Deep Research) chats
- **Anthropic Memory Feature**: Working on conversation memory that references previous chats
- **Nx Self-Healing CI**: Automatically creates and validates fixes for CI failures ([Nx Blog](https://nx.dev/blog/nx-self-healing-ci))
- **Cloudflare Containers**: Public beta launch with curated awesome list ([GitHub](https://github.com/tobilg/awesome-cloudflare-containers))
- **MCP Jam Tool**: Fork of MCP Inspector with multi-server support and built-in chat ([GitHub](https://github.com/MCPJam/inspector))
- **Context Engineering**: Harrison Chase proposes LangGraph enhancements for custom context management ([GitHub Issue](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langgraph/issues/5023))
- **Manus Cloud Browser**: Persistent login sessions for AI agents with encrypted credential storage and cross-device support ([Manus Docs](https://manus.im/help/cloud-browser))
- **Cline Diff Algorithm**: Open-sourced their diff editing implementation for faster, more reliable code changes ([GitHub](https://github.com/cline/cline/blob/main/evals/diff-edits/diff-apply/diff-06-23-25.ts), [Blog](https://cline.bot/blog/cline-v3-12-faster-diff-edits-model-favorites-and-more))

---

### Prompt Engineering Playbook

Addy Osmani (Engineering Lead for Google Chrome) released a comprehensive guide: "The difference between a vague 'fix my code' request and a well-crafted prompt can mean the difference between generic, unhelpful advice and precise, actionable solutions."

([Full Guide](https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-prompt-engineering-playbook-for))

---

## 🚨 Cursor Workshop this Friday! 🚨

### Unlock Cursor's Full Potential for Your Whole Team!

I'm genuinely excited to share this workshop with you. After months of pushing the boundaries with AI coding tools, I've distilled everything into a 6-hour intensive that will transform how you work with Cursor (and any AI coding assistant).

**Why This Workshop is Different:**
- **Real workflows, not tutorials**: Learn the exact processes I use daily to build production apps
- **Failure-focused approach**: Turn every AI mishap into a learning opportunity
- **Tool-agnostic principles**: Master concepts that work across Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and beyond

**What You'll Master:**
✅ Project generation that actually works (with proper structure and best practices)
✅ Context curation for massive codebases without token overload
✅ Agent behavior patterns - know when they're stuck BEFORE wasting credits
✅ Composer pipelines that automate your entire workflow
✅ Git + AI strategies for safe experimentation
✅ Multi-file refactoring without the chaos

**Proven Results:**
> "Take John's cursor workshop it is 🔥 HIGHLY Recommend" —David Wells

> "I used the skills you taught me to effectively one-shot OAuth issuer support in the Epic Stack. So cool!" —Kent C. Dodds

> "John is the cursor god" —Sunil Pai

**Workshop Details:**
- **When:** Friday, June 27, 2025, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM (PDT)
- **Format:** Live Zoom workshop with Q&A throughout
- **Includes:** Recording access, workshop materials, and my personal Cursor rules

**💰 Pricing:**
- **🎯 $249**
   (egghead.io yearly subscribers get a $100 discount)

**Perfect for:**
- Developers frustrated with AI tools that "almost" work
- Teams wanting to standardize their AI workflows
- Anyone who's felt the pain of agents modifying the wrong files
- Developers ready to 10x their productivity with AI

➡️ **[See Full Workshop Details](https://egghead.io/workshop/cursor)**

➡️ **[Register Now →](https://buy.stripe.com/7sY7sEbOZbGO0kx7pw9fW09)**

*P.S. - Team training packages available. Get your whole team up to speed with group rates!*

That's all for this week!

Remember: with great autonomous power comes great autonomous responsibility.

Keep shipping (but maybe keep a human in the loop...) and remember you can reply directly to this email if you have any questions or feedback.

John Lindquist

Enjoy this newsletter? [Share it with a friend!](https://egghead.io/newsletters/ai-dev-essentials)

[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #12: Google launches Gemini CLI, Warp 2.0, and Midjourney goes video

Gemini CLI drops, Claude Code evolves, and Cursor powers up. Explore AI agents, tooling, and dev workflows in AI Dev Essentials Issue #12 by John Lindquist.

The Art of Keyboard Wizardry: Building a 1,000+ Line Karabiner Config

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the **eleventh issue of AI Dev Essentials!** I've been digging more and more into using Claude Code to spin up projects. Here's a couple of fun ideas I've been putting together using _only_ Claude Code:

- dotagent (https://www.npmjs.com/package/dotagent) - A tool for syncing rules/instructions across Cursor/Claude/Windsurf/etc.
- chromancer (https://www.npmjs.com/package/chromancer) - A CLI for interacting with Chrome. It wraps around Claude Code to generate and save automated browser workflows.
- Script Kit (https://www.scriptkit.com/) - I added MCP support so Cursor/etc can invoke your scripts.

There's obviously no way I could've done this much work in the past week without using AI agents (mostly Claude Code).

I'm still deterimining guidelines for Cursor vs Claude Code. Cursor recently introduced a new Ultra plan that's $200/month and has 20x more usage than Pro which should allow you to run `o3` (an _awesome_ model) full time. My quick, too-early take:

- Cursor gives you more control and customizations. It's perfect for "focused" work where you want to be an active participant in the process.
- Claude Code is great for "automated" work where you just want to leave the desk and come back to to review a feature.

As always, the model used will always be more important than the tool. So since Cursor can also use Claude Opus/Sonnet and has backgound agents + bugbot, it's just a more fully-featured offering which can only continue to improve. I love CLIs (I'm mean I really, really love CLIS), but there always comes a point where you need to open a GUI. Anyway, I'll be continuing to use both for now.

I was also just accepted into the OpenAI Open Source fund which granted me $5000 in credits to use the Codex CLI (OpenAI's version of Claude Code), so I should have strong opinions on that very soon. I _love_ OpenAI's Codex through the web interface where it can spin up your project and submit PRs, so I have high hopes for the CLI.

I've honestly had more fun programming over the past couple of months than I've had during my entire 20+ year career!

### 🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

The [Building Local AI Agents with Ollama and the AI SDK](https://egghead.io/courses/scripting-local-language-models-with-ollama-and-the-vercel-ai-sdk~gmi9k) course is now live! I've released the first 5 lessons covering:
- Setting up Ollama for local AI development
- Building your first agent with the AI SDK
- Implementing tool calling and function execution
- Managing agent state and conversation flow
- Deploying local agents with persistent memory

Check out the course at [https://egghead.io/courses/scripting-local-language-models-with-ollama-and-the-vercel-ai-sdk~gmi9k](https://egghead.io/courses/scripting-local-language-models-with-ollama-and-the-vercel-ai-sdk~gmi9k)

---

## 🤖 Model & Platform Updates

### Gemini 2.5 Family Goes Stable

Google has restructured their Gemini 2.5 lineup with significant improvements:

**Gemini 2.5 Pro** (Stable, no changes from 06-05)
- Now the stable long-term support model
- Maintains existing pricing structure
- "gemini-2.5-pro" model name for production use

**Gemini 2.5 Flash** (Stable, updated pricing)
- Simplified pricing based on developer feedback
- Performance improvements from 05-20 variant
- Now the go-to model for cost-conscious applications

**NEW: Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite** (Preview)
- Small reasoning model at just $0.10/1M input, $0.40/1M output
- Pushes the cost/intelligence frontier
- Ideal for high-volume applications requiring reasoning capabilities

([Google Blog](https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-2-5-model-family-expands/), [Google Cloud Blog](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/gemini-2-5-flash-lite-flash-pro-ga-vertex-ai))

> The introduction of Flash-Lite is particularly exciting. We're seeing Google compete aggressively on the cost front while maintaining reasoning capabilities. This could be a game-changer for applications that need to process massive amounts of data with some level of intelligence. Honestly, I'm kinda glad they've shipped 2.5 so they can focus on whatever 3.0 is going to be 😅

### OpenAI's Open Source Model Progress Update

At Y Combinator's AI startup school, Sam Altman provided an update on OpenAI's open-source model initiative, first announced in March 2025. The model, which will be OpenAI's first open-weight release since GPT-2 in 2019, is being developed with reasoning capabilities similar to o3-mini and is aimed for release in early summer.

Key details:
- Text-in, text-out model designed for high-end consumer hardware
- Highly permissive license with few usage restrictions
- Toggle-able reasoning capabilities
- Led by VP of Research Aidan Clark

([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/31/openai-plans-to-release-a-new-open-language-model-in-the-coming-months/), [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-plans-release-open-weight-language-model-coming-months-2025-03-31/), [VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-to-release-open-source-model-as-ai-economics-force-strategic-shift/))

> OpenAI has been gathering community feedback since March, and Altman himself admitted they've been "on the wrong side of history" regarding open source. This shift is clearly influenced by the success of Meta's Llama models (over 1 billion downloads) and pressure from competitors like DeepSeek. I'm looking forward to seeing how this balances OpenAI's commercial interests with community needs.

### Revolutionary AI Performance in Medical Research

A combination of GPT-4.1, o3-mini-high, and Gemini 2.0 Flash achieved superhuman performance in systematic medical reviews ([medRxiv](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.13.25329541v1)):

- Completed 12 work-years of Cochrane reviews in just 2 days
- 96.7% sensitivity vs 81.7% for human reviewers
- Found 54 additional eligible studies missed by original authors
- Generated new statistically significant findings in 2 reviews

The system correctly identified all originally included studies while discovering critical findings humans missed, like preoperative immune-enhancing supplementation reducing hospital stays by one day.

> This is the kind of AI application that genuinely excites me. It's not replacing researchers but augmenting them to find insights that would otherwise be missed. The fact that blinded reviewers sided with the AI 69.3% of the time when there were disagreements speaks volumes.

---

## 🔧 Developer Tooling & MCP Updates

### MCP Goes Mainstream

The Model Context Protocol is having a moment:

**Cloudflare Open Sources use-mcp**
- React library connecting to any MCP server in 3 lines of code
- Supports SSE and Streamable HTTPS remote servers
- Handles OAuth flow automatically
- Part of the official MCP organization for reference implementation

([Cloudflare Blog](https://blog.cloudflare.com/connect-any-react-application-to-an-mcp-server-in-three-lines-of-code/), [GitHub](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/use-mcp))

**OpenAI Adds MCP Support to ChatGPT**
- Limited initially to search and fetch tools for deep research
- Remote MCP with OAuth support
- Documentation available at [platform.openai.com/docs/mcp](https://platform.openai.com/docs/mcp)

**Google Cloud Run MCP Tutorial**
- Deploy remote MCP servers in under 10 minutes
- Comprehensive guide for production deployments

([Google Cloud Blog](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/build-and-deploy-a-remote-mcp-server-to-google-cloud-run-in-under-10-minutes))

**Block's MCP Best Practices**
- Lessons from building 60+ MCP servers
- Design patterns and architecture recommendations

([Block Engineering Blog](https://engineering.block.xyz/blog/blocks-playbook-for-designing-mcp-servers))

> MCP is becoming the standard for AI tool integration. The fact that major players are all adopting it suggests we're moving toward a more interoperable AI ecosystem. I'll definietly have more educational materials around MCPs soon!

### OpenAI's Prompt Management Revolution

OpenAI introduced Prompts as an API primitive:

- Centrally manage, version, and optimize prompts
- Use across Playground, API, Evals, and Stored Completions
- Preconfigured with tools, models, and messages
- New "Optimize" button in Playground for API optimization
- Replaces the old presets system

([OpenAI Community](https://community.openai.com/t/prompts-are-an-api-primitive-now/1290247), [Documentation](https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text?api-mode=responses#reusable-prompts))

> Finally! Prompt management has been a pain point for production AI applications. This brings prompts to the same level as other API resources, making it easier to maintain consistency across teams and applications.

### Developer Resources

**models.dev - Open Source AI Model Database**
- Comprehensive pricing and limits information
- Powers opencode under the hood
- Community-contributed with API access
- Star and contribute at [models.dev](https://models.dev)

([Official Site](https://models.dev/), [GitHub](https://github.com/sst/models.dev))

**Container-use Now Works with OpenAI Codex CLI**
- Solomon Hykes confirmed integration
- Enables containerized development workflows

([GitHub](https://github.com/dagger/container-use))

> Giving AI Agents enough control to `rm -rf` is why the community is so bullish on containers for everything!

---

## 💻 Cursor Corner

### Cursor Ultra Plan Launches at $200/month

Cursor introduced a new Ultra tier with 20x more usage than Pro:

- Addresses heavy user demands for unlimited-style usage
- Positioned between Pro and enterprise offerings
- Reflects the growing appetite for AI-assisted development at scale

([Cursor Blog](https://www.cursor.com/blog/new-tier), [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/anysphere-launches-a-200-a-month-cursor-ai-coding-subscription/))

> This is exactly what I've been hoping for! The mental overhead of tracking usage on Pro was real. While $200/month isn't cheap, for professional developers who live in Cursor, it's a no-brainer. I'm curious to see if this pressures other tools to offer similar "all you can eat" plans. There's a bit of buzz around how ambigous the messaging/pricing and it's obviously frustrating for anyone trying to budget out AI costs.

## 🚀 Quick Updates

- **OpenAI Codex Best-of-N**: Generate multiple solutions simultaneously, rolling out to Pro, Enterprise, Team, Edu, and Plus users ([Changelog](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11428266-codex-changelog))
- **Claude Code "ultrathink" Trigger**: Use thinking triggers for better results, with "ultrathink" being the most powerful ([Anthropic Docs](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/extended-thinking-tips))
- **Google Labs Flow Updates**: Complete tutorial thread on ingredients, frames, camera controls, and scene builder for Veo 3 ([Google Blog](https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-flow-veo-ai-filmmaking-tool/), [FAQ](https://labs.google/fx/tools/flow/faq))
- **ElevenLabs v3**: Revolutionary emotion control with audio tags like [excited], [whispers], [sighs], [laughs] ([ElevenLabs v3](https://elevenlabs.io/v3), [Blog](https://elevenlabs.io/blog/eleven-v3))

---

## 🔒 Security & Best Practices

### The Lethal Trifecta Warning

Simon Willison echoed many of my thoughts around MCP+Security. Definitely worth a read: ([Blog Post](https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/)):

**The Lethal Trifecta = Private Data + Untrusted Content + External Communication**

Any AI system with all three components is vulnerable to data exfiltration attacks. This is especially critical for MCP users who might inadvertently combine:
- File system access (private data)
- Web browsing (untrusted content)  
- API calls or messaging (external communication)

**Mitigation Strategies:**
- Never combine all three capabilities in one agent
- Implement strict sandboxing between components
- Use human-in-the-loop verification for sensitive operations
- Audit your MCP tool combinations carefully

> This is the kind of security thinking we need more of. As we give AI agents more capabilities, we need to think adversarially about how they could be exploited. The MCP ecosystem makes it trivially easy to create vulnerable combinations.

---

## ⚡ AI Ecosystem Observations

### Google Cloud IAM Outage Cascade

A major lesson in infrastructure dependencies:
- Google Cloud IAM failure cascaded to Cloudflare, Anthropic, Spotify, Discord, and Replit
- Highlighted single points of failure in the AI infrastructure stack
- Key takeaway: Implement graceful fallbacks and avoid single-provider dependencies

([Full Analysis](https://forgecode.dev/blog/gcp-cloudflare-anthropic-outage/))

> Did you feel this? I sure did. That was a strange couple of hours where I felt lost without my AI agents... I'm just glad it was a simple failure and not a more serious issue.

### AI Agents Playing Diplomacy

Fascinating behavioral patterns emerged:
- **Claude**: Couldn't lie, was exploited by other players
- **Gemini 2.5 Pro**: Nearly conquered Europe with tactical brilliance
- **o3**: Orchestrated secret coalitions, backstabbed allies, won

> These experiments reveal fundamental differences in how models approach strategy and deception. When choosing models for your applications, consider not just capabilities but behavioral tendencies. I'm sure we'll see more about this in the future.

### AGI as Product Experience

Logan Kilpatrick's perspective on AGI resonated strongly this week:
- AGI won't be a single model breakthrough
- Product experience integrating memory, reasoning, and context matters more
- Small model improvements + great design = "AGI moment" for users
- The narrative is shifting from model-centric to product-centric

([Source](https://youtu.be/kp9afmazO_w))

---

## 🚨 URGENT: Cursor Workshop Early Bird Ends TOMORROW! 🚨

### Turn Failures into Fuel with Cursor - Save $49 NOW!

**⏰ LAST CHANCE: Early bird pricing expires in less than 24 hours!**

I'm genuinely excited to share this workshop with you. After months of pushing the boundaries with AI coding tools, I've distilled everything into a 6-hour intensive that will transform how you work with Cursor (and any AI coding assistant).

**Why This Workshop is Different:**
- **Real workflows, not tutorials**: Learn the exact processes I use daily to build production apps
- **Failure-focused approach**: Turn every AI mishap into a learning opportunity
- **Tool-agnostic principles**: Master concepts that work across Cursor, Windsurf, Copilot, and beyond
- **Live debugging sessions**: Watch me handle real errors and stuck agents in real-time

**What You'll Master:**
✅ Project generation that actually works (with proper structure and best practices)
✅ Context curation for massive codebases without token overload
✅ Agent behavior patterns - know when they're stuck BEFORE wasting credits
✅ Composer pipelines that automate your entire workflow
✅ Git + AI strategies for safe experimentation
✅ Multi-file refactoring without the chaos

**Proven Results:**
> "Take John's cursor workshop it is 🔥 HIGHLY Recommend" —David Wells

> "I used the skills you taught me to effectively one-shot OAuth issuer support in the Epic Stack. So cool!" —Kent C. Dodds

> "John is the cursor god" —Sunil Pai

**Workshop Details:**
- **When:** Friday, June 27, 2025, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM (PDT)
- **Format:** Live Zoom workshop with Q&A throughout
- **Includes:** Recording access, workshop materials, and my personal Cursor rules

**💰 Pricing:**
- ~~Regular Price: $249~~
- **🎯 EARLY BIRD: $200 (Save $49!)**
- **⚠️ Price increases TOMORROW at midnight!**

**Perfect for:**
- Developers frustrated with AI tools that "almost" work
- Teams wanting to standardize their AI workflows
- Anyone who's felt the pain of agents modifying the wrong files
- Developers ready to 10x their productivity with AI

➡️ **[See Full Workshop Details](https://egghead.io/workshop/cursor)**

➡️ **[SECURE YOUR EARLY BIRD SPOT NOW →](https://buy.stripe.com/7sY7sEbOZbGO0kx7pw9fW09?prefilled_promo_code=GEUHPI9B)**

*P.S. - Team training packages available. Get your whole team up to speed with group rates!*

*P.P.S. - Seriously, don't wait. The $49 savings ends tomorrow and I'd hate for you to miss out. This workshop will pay for itself in saved time within the first week.*

---

That's all for this week! Feel free to reply directly to this email with any questions or feedback.

Keep on shipping! 🚀

John Lindquist

[egghead.io](https://egghead.io)

AI Dev Essentials #11: Gemini 2.5 Stable, MCP goes mainstream

AI Dev Essentials #11: Claude Code fuels new CLI tools, Cursor Ultra plan launches, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite slashes costs, & OpenAI open-source model looms 

Standard AI SDKs are powerful for text generation, but they can't read your local files, understand your code's context, or write changes back to your project. This lesson demonstrates how to break past that limitation using the `@anthropic-ai/claude-code` SDK, which leverages the full power of the Claude Code executable installed in your environment.

You'll learn how to create simple yet powerful scripts that are aware of your codebase and can perform actions like reading files and writing output, all driven by natural language prompts.

**Workflow demonstrated in this lesson:**

* Initialize a new project with Bun and install the `@anthropic-ai/claude-code` SDK.
* Use the `query` function to stream responses from the AI.
* Filter streamed events to isolate and handle the final successful text result.
* Craft prompts that instruct the AI to read the script's own source code and analyze its contents.
* Grant permissions to the AI to perform file system actions, such as writing its findings to a new text file.

**Key benefits:**

* **Go Beyond Text Generation:** Build scripts that can read, understand, and interact with your project files.
* **Leverage Built-in Tool Use:** Directly access Claude Code's ability to perform actions without complex API integrations.
* **Automate Code Analysis:** Create tools that can analyze variables, summarize files, or perform other code-related tasks with a simple prompt.
* **Secure by Default:** Learn how to explicitly grant permissions for actions like file editing, ensuring you remain in control.

Build Your Own AI Dev Tools with the Claude Code SDK

### **Build Powerful, Local AI-Driven Command-Line Scripts**

Go beyond simple AI chats and unlock the true potential of local language models by learning to script them. This course will guide you step-by-step through the process of building a flexible and intelligent command-line tool that can understand natural language, interact with your file system, and automate complex tasks—all running entirely on your local machine.

Starting with a blank TypeScript file, you'll learn how to combine the power of **Ollama**, the **Vercel AI SDK**, and **Zod** to create a script that's not just functional, but smart. We'll begin by teaching the AI to parse a simple command from a sentence. From there, we'll progressively add layers of sophistication: processing dynamic user input, making the script aware of your project's files, and generating meaningful text-based output.

You'll also learn critical patterns for building robust and extensible tools. We'll cover how to handle invalid commands and unexpected AI responses gracefully. Then, you'll refactor the script to use a modular, file-based system for its commands, allowing you to easily add new functionality without touching the core logic. Finally, we'll add a layer of intelligence that allows your script to infer exactly what you mean, right down to the type of file you want it to process.

By the end of this course, you will have built a powerful, personalized AI assistant and gained the foundational skills to create sophisticated local automations for any task you can imagine.

**What You'll Learn:**

* How to script local language models using Ollama and the Vercel AI SDK.
* To parse and process dynamic user input from the command line.
* To use Zod schemas, including `enums`, to validate and structure AI model output.
* Techniques for providing file-system context to your scripts with `globby`.
* How to generate context-aware text based on file content.
* Robust error handling for invalid user commands and unexpected AI responses.
* To build a modular and extensible tool by defining commands in separate files.
* To intelligently infer user intent, such as dynamically determining file types from a prompt.

Scripting Local Language Models with Ollama and the Vercel AI SDK

Build a local AI-powered command-line assistant from scratch. Learn to use Ollama, Vercel AI SDK & Zod to parse input, automate tasks, and run scripts offline.

This lesson demonstrates how to give Cursor direct access to your terminal output using the [Nx MCP extension](https://nx.dev/getting-started/ai-integration?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=videos&utm_campaign=Nx-AI&utm_id=Nx-AI), enabling automatic error detection and fixing in monorepo projects.

**Workflow demonstrated in this lesson:**

- Encounter a runtime error when serving a Vite application in an Nx monorepo
- Install and configure the Nx Console extension with MCP integration
- Ask Cursor to check your terminal for errors and fix the underlying issues
- Watch as the AI accesses running task details and terminal output through Nx MCP tools
- Observe how it analyzes workspace relationships to identify incorrect imports and missing dependencies

**Key benefits:**

- Seamless Error Handling: AI gains direct access to terminal output and running task information
- Automatic Diagnosis: Accurately identify the root cause of errors without manual copying
- Context-Aware Fixes: Leverage workspace knowledge to implement proper solutions
- Reduced Context Switching: Eliminate the need to manually relay information between terminal and AI



Juri Strumpflohner

Enable Cursor to directly access the terminal to read the output and fix issues

See how Nx MCP gives AI coding assistants direct access to terminal output and running tasks, enabling automatic error detection and fixing.

This lesson demonstrates how to solve the predictability problem when using AI to generate code in monorepos by combining Cursor with Nx generators.

**Workflow demonstrated in this lesson:**

- Explore how Nx generators provide predictable scaffolding for new libraries
- Set up [Nx Console with MCP](https://nx.dev/features/enhance-AI?utm_source=egghead&utm_medium=videos&utm_campaign=Nx-AI&utm_id=Nx-AI) integration to expose generator capabilities to Cursor
- Use the AI assistant to brainstorm a new feature with the help of the Nx MCP tools
- Have Cursor leverage the Nx MCP tools to trigger the appropriate Nx generator for creating a React-based feature library
- Observe how the AI assistant takes the generated library and further integrates it into the codebase

**Key benefits:**

- **Predictable Code Structure**: Ensure generated libraries follow your project's and organization's conventions
- **Consistent Setup**: Maintain uniform configuration across TypeScript projects and package.json files
- **Guided Implementation**: Combine AI instructions with structured, predictable code generation

Enable Cursor to generate predictable project setups

Learn how to combine Cursor AI with Nx generators for predictable library creation in monorepos, ensuring consistent structure across your codebase.

This lesson demonstrates how AI assistants struggle with complex monorepo structures and how to dramatically improve their understanding using the [Nx MCP extension](https://nx.dev/features/enhance-AI?utm_source=egghead&utm_medium=videos&utm_campaign=Nx-AI&utm_id=Nx-AI) in Cursor.

**Workflow demonstrated in this lesson:**

- Observe how AI initially attempts to understand monorepo structure by scanning package.json files and analyzing folder hierarchies
- Install the Nx Console extension and configure the Nx MCP server in your project
- Enable the Nx MCP integration in Cursor's settings to access 15 powerful workspace tools
- Ask the AI assistant questions about your workspace structure and dependencies
- Watch as the AI leverages Nx's knowledge to accurately identify project relationships
- Visualize dependencies through an interactive graph generated by the Nx tools

**Key benefits:**

- Enhanced Workspace Understanding: AI assistants gain direct access to Nx's comprehensive workspace knowledge
- Accurate Dependency Mapping: Precisely identify connections between libraries and applications
- More efficient parsing of your workspace structure for your AI assistant

Give Cursor monorepo awareness with the Nx MCP

Learn how to enhance AI capabilities in monorepo setups using Nx MCP integration with Cursor, providing better project insights and dependency visualization.

Bite-Sized Screencasts for Web Developers that Hate Long Boring Videos