A new #1 coding agent
Taking 3 of the top 5 spots
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, sorry for the delayed one today.
I just got back from Tahoe with the Factory team - we’re officially launched (!!) and raised $50M Series B from NEA, Sequoia, JP Morgan, NVIDIA, Abstract Ventures and industry leaders. We’ve hit #1 on Terminal Bench (which ranks AI coding tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) it’s been so interesting to see it first hand of what goes into improving scores (from only a handful of engineers who built this CLI in literally weeks). Our CLI has been tested by many early-access builders and they love how it feels, and it makes them more confident with their code. We support multiple models, custom subagents (can configure models too), BYOK, an SDK and all the other features you’d expect.
we’re live on product hunt if you can support us there
full announcement post is here
star us on github (im owning this github) & join the community (on gh too)
i’m hosting a meet-up in sf soon, come - I’d love to meet you irl!
I’ve mostly been setting up the early access program, filming videos, improving docs, bug finding among other things - lots more to come for the community; starter kits, tutorials etc.
p.s. please support this so i look good to my new boss 😉.
The OG NotebookLM team has been building an app for the last few months. Huxe, is now public, and I’ve been playing with it for a while. It’s honestly one of the best first-user experiences I’ve had on any AI product. It gives you a radio station of topics and feeds you follow.
GPT-5 Codex is now available in the OpenAI Responses API. Same pricing as GPT-5 and it makes a pretty good pelican riding a bicycle. Here’s a prompting guide for developers who want to use it as a replacement in their workflows.
and oh! on Qwen — I’m following their launches, will compile them all in one snippet next week.
ChatGPT Pulse just launched which gives you proactive updates across your chats and apps.
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🌐 What I’m consuming
GleanNext-gen work AI Agents + Assistant functionality, unveiled at Glean:LIVE. Register here to watch the virtual launch, which features live product demos, performance results, and new personalizations.*
Building agentic interfaces - how do we speak to them, and how should they speak back?
Building SOTA enterprise agents 90x cheaper with automated prompt optimization.
Cognition’s CEO on what comes after code.
Intercom’s Co-founder on Fin AI, his rubric for investing in AI companies and more.
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⚙️ Tools and demos
Scout Monitoring’s MCP - Let your AI assistant debug for you. Ask “why is latency spiking?” and get answers and context, in plain English.*
Wilson - Your legal superagent that’s all over document redlines, key term extractions and contract questions.
Ok Computer by Kimi AI - Agent mode from one of the best open-source models right now. Their chat product is an actually usable alternative to ChatGPT and is generally better at aesthetics in its outputs (say, slides).
Mixboard by Google Labs - A concepting board that helps you explore, expand, and refine your ideas with Nano Banana. (US only)
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🥣 Dev dish
Chrome has an official DevTools MCP server now - Lists 22 tools for input, navigation, debugging, network, performance and more. (example prompts)
You can now log in to Gemini CLI with your Pro/Ultra plan and get much higher limits.
VibeSDK - Make your own vibe coding platform and deploy it on Cloudflare in minutes.
Dayflow - Turn your screen activity into a clean timeline every day. (I asked Codex for a basic check for privacy; it checks out clean — transcript here)
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🍦 Afters
OpenAI announced 5 more Stargate sites, totalling 7 GW of planned capacity in the next three years. Three of these new sites will be built in partnership with Oracle, and two of them with SoftBank. Surprising fact: cities are lining up for these projects. OpenAI claims they got 300+ proposals from 30 US states. Emily Chang’s (Bloomberg) coverage on the first site in Abilene is worth watching.
You can now move chats in and out of Claude Projects (and you can do it in bulk). I’ve been asking for this feature since week 1 of Projects launch last year. Sad that I’ve now moved to using my local folders with a terminal 😅.
Meta released a new research - Code World Model. CWM has 32B params and performs roughly the same as other models of that size, which is a great signal for any new research direction.
Emergent (text-to-app builder) raised $23M series A, Modular (software for GPUs) raised $250M and Cohere is now valued at $7B.
That’s it for today. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts. 👋
Hi Ben, congrats on your new position at Factory, it sounds like a very promising and exciting opportunity. That being said, as a longtime reader of the newsletter I'm a little concerned about how objective you'll be in your reporting going forward. The title and main of this post is basically an ad for your company. I can't imagine if you were overtaken on terminal bench by a competitor it would get the same treatment. How do you plan to address this moving forward? Thanks