Hey folks,

So Astra is out²⁰¹ and, in my experience, a token-hungry monster of a model… I was playing around with it over the weekend and burned through 4Bn tokens and built…nothing really.

I also wasted my banked resets too and feel annoyed at myself for just throwing all sorts of requests at it (long-running and short).

I don’t know yet if it feels to me like a huge capability leap but every time a new model comes out I always think it must be my skill issue. I’ve seen some awesome demos on X of people building insane looking things (seems like everyone is building 3d worlds and games?).

Two things I one-shot that I’ll share because I’m not sure what to do with them yet:

‘forgotten devices³¹³’ - these images were created by the image generation tool (which is pretty nuts!). My idea was to have a bunch of these and then you could click and play with each one (if I had any tokens left).

p.s. you can see in the bottom left the 3 version my agent made (I always have 3 versions created when starting an idea so I can feel out which direction I like best).

‘world radio²⁷²’ - an old ipod interface that plays radio stations live from around the world. Not sure what I was going to do here but it works pretty well (some rough edges like the top button wtf?! 😂 )

I’m going to spend some time this week trying to figure out some of the better ways to work with Astra (other than letting it use tons of tokens), and I’ll let you know my experience.

Headlines

Astra is the start of the GPT-6 family. It smokes ARC-AGI-3¹⁴², scores the highest on Zapier’s AutomationBench¹²² and costs the same as Fable 5.1. Though it’s a spiky model, it’s not consistently great.

It is a show horse, not a workhorse - Kieran Klaassen¹²⁹

I both love and absolutely detest this model - Theo¹³⁹

But I’m hopeful because this was exactly the case with the GPT-5 release. By the time we got to GPT-5.3, i.e. in a few months, that model was consistently great.

Astra can draw a portrait in Canva²⁶⁷ - yes, the way you and I would draw using a computer (but obviously much better). Its computer use is fast enough to play piano²⁶⁷.

Other things people are doing with Astra:

• Rebuilding Manhattan⁴⁰⁰ in Unreal Engine.

• Generating UIs⁴¹⁴ autonomously.

• 3d printing a custom shower-drain part²⁸¹.

• Identifying sounds from spectrograms¹⁷⁶ (i.e. pictures with sound frequencies)

• and dozens¹⁶⁸ of examples¹⁶³ of modelling real-life products¹⁹⁶ in Blender or similar tools.

Also, in Codex, Astra can now ask questions without waiting for the answers¹⁴². It carries on with everything that doesn’t need your answer (or where the answer can be assumed), and uses your reply without losing track of the original task.

OpenAI also said it has reached its automated research intern goal¹⁹³. These agents can tackle research tasks that would take a skilled person several days, while humans set the direction and judge the results. The next target is an automated AI researcher by March 2028¹³⁷.

You should soon be able to change the way Claude Code behaves¹⁹⁰. Anthropic is testing a way to extend its functionality by letting Claude Code write plugins that can change the interface, log actions or restrict what agents are allowed to do. It hasn’t shipped yet, and the Claude Code team is looking for feedback.

Inworld built Realtime TTS-2 for the next wave of consumer apps. That takes three things: text-based voice design, sub-100ms latency at P99, and one voice identity across 200+ languages. Learn how to give your AI apps a voice¹³⁸.*

My feed

• ChatGPT Work can learn your writing style³²⁰ from your emails, messages and files.

• Hold Shift and drag to convert files on your Mac²²⁸ with Tangerine.

• An Alien Mind¹⁸¹ - Jakub Pachocki (OpenAI’s Chief Scientist) on keeping AI’s future in human hands.

• Using Blender with coding agents²³⁷ on macOS.

• Agents can now control a physical iPhone over USB²⁴³.

• SuperAstra¹⁸⁷ - Editing Super Nintendo games live.

• Cibby¹⁵⁸ - an app for people who collect physical games.

• Doodle Shooter¹⁸³ (loved playing this) and put yourself in Smash 64¹⁴².

• A skill to make web apps feel native in iOS Safari¹⁹⁷.

• A writing plugin²¹⁴ that interviews you, critiques drafts and saves what you learn.

• Factory’s CEO²⁵³ on who to hire when AI writes the code.

• Uzu by Mirai runs local models 2-3x faster¹⁹⁰ on Apple Macs. (I’m an investor)

• Baseten is starting an open-source AI research lab¹⁴³.

• Codex has changed my life as a solopreneur⁴²⁴.

• A maths hackathon¹¹⁶ with 40 hours and $2M+ in AI credits.

• Your old agent instructions may be holding Astra back²⁰⁰.

• Seven agents, $300 each, 72 hours, and a race to make money²⁸².

• Mistral raised €3B¹²³ at a valuation above €21B, led by Samsung.

• Entries for new maths work - one from Astra¹¹⁸ and another from Claude⁹⁹.

Afters

since you guys loved the exploding tesla.. I used GPT-6 Astra to create a 3D website that pulls apart the male anatomy into 2,234 modeled pieces! we are in a renaissance of learning

@ashebytes²⁵⁴

This is amazing. Copy this screenshot into Codex. It can solve most issues with Astra not following instructions. From @pvncher.

@daniel_mac8¹⁷⁴

What signals (charts!) of the future are people watching? I find myself checking @OpenRouter rankings: openrouter.ai/rankings (Just a few days into September, but tracking at 27x y/y growth. Both a reflection of the natural demand for tokens and their product excellence.)

@jeff_weinstein¹⁷⁵

So Astra is able to identify sounds from mel spectrograms zero-shot. I don't think we've scratched the surface of what this model can do (and this is light reasoning btw)

@maxxrubin_¹³⁴

A personal website should feel like you’ve briefly left the rest of the internet

@benjitaylor²²⁰

check the replies and quote tweets for this - so many wonderful personal websites!

£90Bn spent by UK's councils visualised as apple maps 107m rows of (public) data bentossell.com/council-spend/

@bentossell¹⁵⁰

I scraped 100 million pictures of kids' drawings, and made them searchable so you can see the trends of the last 20 years walzr.com/kids-trends

@rtwlz¹⁶⁶

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