Digest #550 | Building with AI? Get Pro and join the community⁵⁹

Hey folks,

You’re over-building stuff…i think. Well, I am definitely. Every time i ask claude/chat to give me options to build XYZ, its always the same; full stack, agent, etc. BUT with Claude + MCPs you don’t have to build anything and can get the same results. I did a quick (free) video to show you how to use claude + mcps to build tools and workflows super easily. (posted on twitter⁹³⁶ too)

I’ll create a write-up later but couldn’t get it done in time for the email today.

Also, registrations for Bolt’s Guinness World Record Hackathon^98† are on—excited to judge the submissions, hope to see tons of bb folks submitting.

Let’s get into it

 🔎 What’s Trending

• OpenAI’s new batch of thinking/reasoning models o3 and o4 mini⁸⁵ are out now. o3 is the best model out there, roughly tied with Gemini 2.5 Pro. There’s something special about these two models: they use tools (like web search, code execution, image analysis) within their thinking. They are trained for it. I feel these are ahead of the thinking models we’ve been talking about. Instead, I’d call them agentic models.

  • o3 and o4 mini replace o1 and o3 mini in ChatGPT. You can read more about o3 in this amazing review by Dan⁴⁵⁸.

  • OpenAI also released an open-source command-line tool called Codex CLI⁶⁰. It’s supposed to be their replacement for Claude Code, but early reactions are not great.

• You can now connect your Gmail, Calendar and Docs with Claude. And these new interations enable Claude’s take on deep research. With a new feature called “Research¹⁷⁷”, Claude can gather info from all these sources (including the web), reason over it and help you get work done. Research is only available for Max, Team and Enterprise accounts.

• Grok is getting feature parity with top AI apps. Grok Studio¹⁴⁰ can create documents, run code and build mini web apps (like Artifacts/Canvas). It just got a Chatgpt-like Memory feature and new Google Workspace integrations.

• Veo 2¹¹⁸, Google’s video generation model, is rolling out to all Gemini Advanced users in the Gemini app. Plus, Whisk Animate¹⁹⁷ is also generally available.

• AI agents can navigate the complexity of filing taxes. With Salesforce, 1-800Accountant is scaling its digital labor workforce, providing fast personalized answers to questions during tax season. Learn more about Agentforce.⁷¹*
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⚙️ Top tools

• Conversational AI that finally gets you 🎧 Flow by Speechmatics understands every word in 55+ languages – no repeats. Try it free today.¹⁰⁶*

• Gamma³¹⁹ - Native AI tools for creating a presentation, website or social media design. New brand and just hit $50M ARR!

• Launch week⁷³ by Firecrawl:

  • Fire-1²⁴² - A scraping agent that can interact with the web, like using a filter button or search box.

  • Change Tracking¹⁵⁸ - Automatically detects and details changes on websites.

• Zite²²⁷ - Use AI to build apps, use no code to edit them.

• Distro²⁰⁷ - Get interviewed about any piece of content on the internet ans share your expertise.

• n8nChat³⁵⁷ - Create automations in seconds by generating n8n workflows.

• Mirage Edit¹⁷⁷ by Captions - Go from a text prompt to a fully-edited talking video, featuring actors that don’t exist.

• Arcads¹¹¹ added gesture control, so you can make AI avatars cry, laugh, be shocked etc.

More tools →¹⁰⁶
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 🌐 Around the web

• OpenAI wants to a) buy Windsurf²⁵⁴ for $3B and b) create a social network¹⁶⁸.

• Figma holds the trademark for “dev mode”. Now they want Lovable to stop using it⁷⁸. 🤦‍♂️

• Testing a single prompt with 7 different AI builders. Who creates the best app?³⁷⁸

That’s it for today. Feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts. 👋

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