The newsletter for the technically curious. Updates, tool reviews, and lay of the land from an exited founder turned investor and forever tinkerer.

Hey folks,

ChatGPT will start running ads.²⁰² It begins in a few weeks (starting with the US) and applies only to free and Go (the $8/mo plan) customers. Key terms → at the bottom of ChatGPT’s answers, don’t affect the answers, and no conversation/personal data shared with advertisers. OpenAI also released its 2025 revenue⁷⁴: $20B, more than 3x of 2024’s 6B. Just for comparison, Meta made $180B+, and Google made about $295B purely from ads in 2025. OpenAI is still tiny, but it has a massive space to grow into.

Claude Cowork is now available for Pro ($20/mo) customers as well. Download the desktop app⁴²⁵ to try.

Flux.2 [klein]²¹³ is a small and fast image generation/editing model that you can fine-tune as well. This is great for companies that want a massive amount of images generated in a specific pattern, and Nano banana is too expensive for them.

Realism isn’t enough for voice AI—consumers expect more. Join the webinar Amplified 2026 on Jan 28 at 1 PM ET to get insights from Voices’ State of Voice report and see how voice AI leaders are redefining voice AI quality with professional voice talent. Save your seat today.⁸⁷*

🌐 What I’m consuming

• Tldraw is not accepting PRs from external contributors¹⁶⁷ anymore. Why? Most PRs take low-context issues and rush to write code, without fleshing out what the actual solution should be.

• A recap of the “filesystem vs database³⁸⁰” debate for agent memory.

• How to write a good spec⁷⁴⁷ for AI agents.

• Agent skills, rules, subagents⁵⁷⁰: explained.

• Agent psychosis³⁰⁸: Are we going insane?

• AI models all have their favourite names²⁰⁸ for a spaceship pilot, a software developer, a New York woman and more.

⚙️ Tools and demos

• When accuracy really matters, use AI-powered experts. Scroll.ai¹³⁷ automates knowledge workflows across documentation, RFPs, sales enablement, and more.*

• Learnfromlenny¹⁶⁰ - A Twitter reply bot that answers your questions based on 320+ Lenny's Podcast transcripts.

• Ami¹⁵⁴ - Run parallel coding agents from your computer without breaking your flow.

• FastRound⁸⁶ - Helping founders fundraise. Enter your X username, and find investors who follow you and DM them. (example⁵⁰)

🥣 Dev Dish

• Open Responses⁷³ - An open spec based on the OpenAI Responses API, but for building multi-provider interfaces.

• Openwork²³³ - An open-source take on Claude Cowork.

• opensync⁸⁹ - Searchable history, markdown export, and eval-ready datasets from your opencode/claude-code sessions. (see demo³⁵)

• claude-config²⁵⁷ by Brian Lovin- A git repo as the source of truth for skills and settings. (here’s why¹⁶⁹)

🍦 Afters

• TranslateGemma¹⁰¹ from DeepMind - Open models in three sizes (4b, 12b, 27b) with support for 55 languages.

• GLM 4.7 Flash⁷³ is a new open model from Z.AI - it’s a perfect alternative to GPT-OSS-20B if you want the model to be materially better at tool calling.

• New research from Anthropic Fellows¹⁵² defines a limit of “assistant-like” behaviour. As chats go on longer, models rapidly go beyond the limit into other personas. They also talk about a method to stop that from happening.

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

• Find me on X²⁸, Linkedin²⁴, or Instagram³⁰

• Read about me²³ and Ben’s Bites

• 📷 thumbnail¹⁴⁴ sourced from X

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