Quotesby GlyphSimon Willison quotes on AI, with sources
Independent developer and writer · 11 quotes · latest Aug 19, 2026
- I can churn out code a hundred times faster. I don’t have the cognitive capacity to stay on top of 100 times the amount of code. So you still need a team of engineers, so you can load balance that cognitive capacity across the team.
- I can do way more work as a single engineer than I could without agents.
- It used to be that the discipline was enforced on you by the amount of time it took.
- That’s exactly the problem with coding agents and software: it’s very easy to keep adding new rooms, because the cost of adding those rooms is so much cheaper.
- A prompt injection attack against a browsing agent that can exfiltrate or modify that data is a terrifying prospect.
- But if you define agents as LLM systems that can perform useful work via tool calls over multiple steps then agents are here and they are proving to be extraordinarily useful.
- Claude Code and friends have conclusively demonstrated that developers will embrace LLMs on the command line, given powerful enough models and the right harness.
- I think that’s a waste of a great term, especially since it’s becoming clear likely that most programming will involve some level of AI-assistance in the near future.
- The most impactful event of 2025 happened in February, with the quiet release of Claude Code.
- The reason I think MCP may be a one-year wonder is the stratospheric growth of coding agents.
- This turns out to be the big unlock: the latest coding agents against the ~November 2025 frontier models are remarkably effective if you can give them an existing test suite to work against.
About Simon Willison
Independent developer and writer. Listed here for public statements only; no personal details.
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Topics: Coding, Work, Agents, Safety, Platform shift