Simon Willison’s Weblog

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May 2026

75 posts: 6 entries, 11 links, 13 quotes, 4 notes, 41 beats

May 19, 2026

  • Fix for bug where llm_prompt_context() hook did not fully collect chains of responses. #7
  • Compatible with llm>=0.32a0 alpha - adds the ability to stream reasoning tokens.

Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything

Visit Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything

Today at Google I/O, Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash. This one skipped the -preview modifier and went straight to general availability, and Google appear to be using it for a whole lot of their key products:

[... 610 words]

See also my notes on Gemini 3.5 Flash, and the pelican I drew using this upgrade to the plugin.

May 20, 2026

Sighting 5:28 PM — Surf Scoter, in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CA, US, CA
Surf Scoter
Surf Scoter
  • More color! Bar and waffle charts without a color column are shaded by magnitude with a sequential color scheme; color columns holding text values use the observable10 categorical scheme. #2
  • Now checks execute-sql permission before running the query to find the column names.
  • Charts now display interactive tooltips.
  • Fixed a bug where waffleY charts were not described to the agent.

It's hard to find much to write about Google I/O this year because I have a policy of not writing about anything that I can't try out myself, and a lot of the big announcements are "coming soon".

I actually prefer to write about things that are in general availability, because I've had instances in the past where the previews didn't match what was released to the general public later on.

Aside from Gemini 3.5 Flash the most interesting announcement looks to be Google's upcoming OpenClaw competitor Gemini Spark, described as "your personal AI agent" which can "connect natively with your favorite Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and Google Maps". The FAQ for that also includes this confusing detail:

What Gemini model does Gemini Spark run on?

Gemini Spark runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash and Antigravity.

The antigravity.google website currently lists Antigravity as a desktop app, a CLI agent tool (written in Go), the Antigravity SDK (an open source Python wrapper around a bundled closed source Go binary), and the original Antigravity IDE (a VS Code fork).

I guess Gemini Spark, the user-facing hosted agent product, might be running on that Go binary, but I'm not sure why that's worth mentioning in the FAQ!

Naturally I went looking for notes on how Gemini Spark intends to handle the risk of prompt injection. The best information I could find on that was in the Everything Google Cloud customers need to know coming out of Google I/O post aimed at enterprise customers, which includes:

Spark operates in a fully managed, secure runtime on Google Cloud, meaning you get enterprise-grade security without ever having to manage the underlying infrastructure. Every task executes in a fresh, strictly isolated, ephemeral VM to help ensure data never overlaps between sessions. To protect your enterprise, all traffic routes through our secure Agent Gateway that enforces Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies, while user credentials remain fully encrypted and are never exposed directly to the agent.

Given how many people are going to be piping very sensitive data through Gemini Spark in the near future I hope they've made this bullet-proof, or this could be a top candidate for the agent security challenger disaster that we still haven't seen.

Also of note: in Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI Google announce that the open source Gemini CLI tool (Apache 2.0 licensed TypeScript) will stop working with their AI subscription plans on June 18th, replaced by the new closed source Antigravity CLI.

# 3:32 pm / gemini, google, generative-ai, ai, google-io, llms, prompt-injection

Sighting 9:20 AM – 10:00 AM — Common Loon, Canada Goose, Striped Shore Crab, California Brown Pelican, California Sea Lion, in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CA, US, CA
Canada Goose
Canada Goose
Common Loon
Common Loon
Striped Shore Crab
Striped Shore Crab
California Brown Pelican
California Brown Pelican
California Brown Pelican
California Brown Pelican
California Sea Lion
California Sea Lion
Common Loon
Common Loon

How fast is 10 tokens per second really? (via) Neat little HTML app by Mike Veerman (source code here) which simulates LLM token output speeds from 5/second to 800/second.

Useful if you see a model advertised as "30 tokens/second" and want to get a feel for what that actually looks like.

# 5:57 pm / ai, generative-ai, llms

We have the ability to use compute resources to support our proprietary AI applications (such as Grok 5, which is currently being trained at COLOSSUS II), while also providing access to select compute capacity to third-party customers. For example, in May 2026, we entered into Cloud Services Agreements with Anthropic PBC (“Anthropic”), an AI research and development public benefit corporation, with respect to access to compute capacity across COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II. Pursuant to these agreements, the customer has agreed to pay us $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee. The agreements may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.

SpaceX S-1, highlights mine

# 10:26 pm / ai, generative-ai, llms, anthropic, grok

May 21, 2026

  • "View SQL query" buttons for both visible tables and collapsed SQL result tool calls.
  • Don't display empty reasoning chunks
  • Improved handling of truncated responses - table still displays to the user even if the SQL results were truncated when showing the agent.

See Datasette Agent, an extensible AI assistant for Datasette.

  • "View SQL query" buttons below rendered charts.

A Datasette Agent plugin for running commands in a Fly Sprites sandbox.

Datasette Agent

Visit Datasette Agent

We just announced the first release of Datasette Agent, a new extensible AI assistant for Datasette. I’ve been working on my LLM Python library for just over three years now, and Datasette Agent represents the moment that LLM and Datasette finally come together. I’m really excited about it!

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2026 » May

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