Hi Reader,

Here are three things I found interesting in the world of AI in the last week

Claude Code is gaining traction - docs​

Released at the same time as Claude 3.7, it is now my default AI coding interface and I am seeing a lot of devs adopt it. It is sooo good. I found it a bit spendy on the credits initially, but that rapidly improved as I learned how to use it better.

I reckon it has increased my dev speed by 2x compared to previous workflow and I know I can tune it further, which is a bit nuts.

The killer feature for me has been how well it integrates with MCP servers, so I can have it do things like create and edit github issues, directly access a database, test a local web server etc. Anything with an api can be plugged into it which is a phenomenal productivity upgrade. MCP servers have been around for a while but I've only properly integrated them in the last week which is a big part of the productivity boost.

The tool is deeply tied to anthropic (you have to get approval to use it, they collect monitoring stats, you can only use Claude) which I don't love. But it is a javascript library which means while they can keep the code obfuscated it's possible to reverse engineer. Queue anon-kode - works with any openai compatible api, is open source and I just learned about this morning.

Honestly, how can anyone expect to stay focused and productive when shiny new toys serious business tools get released every day?

Solo indie dev @levelsio built a profitable (40k/mo) multi-player dogfight flight sim in 2 weeks - post​

“Ok it’s done, you can play it at ✈️ fly.pieter.com… I’ve never ever made a game before and just made my own flight simulator 100% with Cursor in I’d say 3 hours by just telling it what I wanted. It didn’t go 100% smooth ofc, but 80% yes…”

He has been live tweeting the whole process which I found interesting on its own.

• rapid iteration from day one "cursor add explosions", "make buildings destructable", "make afterburners"
• Claude refused to build missiles "I apologize, but I should not add weapons to this flight simuluator"
  "i mean, it's a game man it need sto hav emissiles" <- no vibe coder worth their salt fixes typos
• 600k followers on X may have helped boost early adoption
• Hit big roadblocks getting multiplayer going, Cursor cofounder showing up to help is a nice side effect of going viral.
• A post from Elon Musk a week ago helped with traction, lucky(?) he used grok3 to build the server.
• Hackers found a way to deploy aliens into the sim through a security flaw
• Vulnerability patched by throwing messages at cursor

While it's more likely to be a flash in the pan than long term business, my main takeaway is that the whole software industry is in a state of flux. Software of all kinds is becoming cheaper to build and I expect build costs to go down more over the next year. Distribution, reach, reputation, audience etc. are more valuable than ever. Dynamic markets are exciting for new entrants, dangerous for incumbents.

I'm wondering if the following is true "it's easier than ever to build software and harder than ever to make money from it"? I dunno, it feels like an interesting idea but I suspect things are more complex than that.

And of course, now is a great time to learn to code a little bit, but you already knew that right?

Making websites Ai-friendly with LLMS.txt - website​

Introduced in late 2024 by Answer.AI lab, it’s essentially an AI-friendly shortcut to website content. Like robots.txt, but the opposite. Rather than blocking crawlers, LLMs.txt provides a curated markdown file that actively invites AI models to pull key info directly, skipping messy navigation and ads.

It’s gaining momentum: major AI players including Anthropic, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Zapier, HuggingFace, and Pinecone are onboard.

My sense is that the AEO (Answer Engine Optimized - SEO's replacement(?) in a world of AI search agents) crowd might give this a chance at significant adoption. Fun fact (at least for me) searching for 'AEO "answer engine optimised"' led me to a linked in post about an SEO company boasting of convicing ChatGPT voice to recommend them as best content writing company in India. I guess they are aiming to win in the AEO rankings as well!

cheers,

JV