Building gets easier

View this post on the web at https://www.bensbites.com/p/building-gets-easier

Hey folks, today I want to quickly pay tribute to my dad, Matthew Tossell, who retires* today after 43 (!!!) years at his firm. That’s 40 years longer than I’ve ever worked anywhere - and Ben’s Bites is the only thing I’ve done for longer than 2 years 😯.
I learned a lot about hard work from him. Too much to put here - he transformed his law firm several times over 4 decades and most recently forced the company to adopt AI (I may have played a part here 😉).
I’ve saved the soppy shit for a letter I wrote him today - as he wrote me one when I sold my first company.
Happy retirement day, dad. I know you’re reading this - my biggest fan (the feelings mutual)
*retirement for him = started a new company, on the board of a university, school and Cardiff business council (plus whatever work I start giving him 😈)
Ok, AI stuff…
I’m becoming Codex-pilled… I’ve been using a terminal every day since realising it’s not scary any more, as it’s just talking to AI, but I forced myself to try the Codex app for tasks and I actually am starting to really really like it.
I still prefer being able to easily have multiple tabs next to one another but I like the Chat | Files (or browser) view a lot - something I never had with a terminal.
I built a dinosaur jumping game for Max and Arabella this morning. Set up a Gmail learning system to understand how to label + archive my emails (plus an automation for it). I’ve revamped my memory system and have been pilling in tons of bookmarks/youtube transcripts etc that I can reference any time.
I have a main folder ‘bites’ which has my general instructions for day-to day stuff:
So it speaks to me in a certain way, knows my memories, how I want it to behave etc. I have a running ‘todos’ thread that I work through each day - with a corresponding ‘TODOS.md’ file.
I desperately am waiting for a mobile version…
Working with agents is just files and access. I’m excited to keep trying this out for day-to-day and coding. But for ‘proper’ coding work I still use droid [ https://substack.com/redirect/4f96a708-4053-4891-a58e-554ac3ec5948?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] in the terminal.
Ben’s Bites is brought to you by Ai4 2026 [ https://substack.com/redirect/81c763fb-1854-4bfc-bfbe-81585304497a?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]
Don’t miss Ai4 2026 [ https://substack.com/redirect/81c763fb-1854-4bfc-bfbe-81585304497a?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] — America’s largest AI conference! Join 12,000+ attendees, 1,000+ speakers, & 400+ exhibits in Las Vegas, August 4-6. Get case studies from Fortune 500 execs on AI Agents, Generative AI & more. Keynotes from Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng. Learn more & register now! [ https://substack.com/redirect/81c763fb-1854-4bfc-bfbe-81585304497a?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]
Headlines
Cloudflare now lets agents create accounts, buy domains and deploy [ https://substack.com/redirect/e11de43c-f4c1-47bd-8288-2176ea64c7fb?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]. An agent can provision a Cloudflare account, start a paid subscription, register a domain, get an API token and deploy without you doing dashboard/admin gymnastics. Humans still approve terms and permissions, but the setup maze is getting agent-readable. Lots of companies are moving this way, letting less-technical people like us just get stuff built without worrying about all the services in the middle.
Stripe announced 288 things at Sessions [ https://substack.com/redirect/6452a7e0-5cfd-4472-b4ed-c2a5b35cc3a9?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], relevant ones: Agentic Commerce Suite, Link's wallet for agents [ https://substack.com/redirect/6519e70b-23e0-47e9-b13e-c1893bea2a85?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], streaming payments and agent-ready Treasury accounts. There is also a Link CLI [ https://substack.com/redirect/bc05b7b5-f675-467d-be2a-81a7a4f471ec?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] that gives agents one-time-use payment credentials from your Link wallet, without exposing your real card details.
Cursor SDK [ https://substack.com/redirect/8cea3e4e-f616-4cbf-a6a6-3beb6df41f69?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - build agents using the same runtime, harness and models that power Cursor.
Warp is now open-source [ https://substack.com/redirect/20b39799-1f0b-496a-9254-2a62e8d4dcb3?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] and OpenAI is the founding sponsor for the repo. Warp's bet is that contributors bring taste/direction/verification while agents do more of the implementation work.
Lightfield [ https://substack.com/redirect/8b35d47d-df5e-4156-a160-9963156137cb?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] is an AI-native CRM that just shipped Skills. Define any workflow in plain English and trigger it with a sentence. The AI agent executes against your full data graph with code execution, web search, and file I/O. Try Lightfield [ https://substack.com/redirect/8b35d47d-df5e-4156-a160-9963156137cb?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] (use code BENSBITESS23 for 3 months free)*
My feed
The most fun I’ve had building apps [ https://substack.com/redirect/6dc00774-d1f2-4ed1-b8d7-9d5b8da40027?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]: GPT-5.5 + GPT-Image-2
Codex masterclass workshop [ https://substack.com/redirect/cbf75347-3a79-43a4-808e-1f6aee694972?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] from AI Engineer London, plus GPT-5.5 prompt guidance [ https://substack.com/redirect/fe1c00ab-b90c-43ef-bf2c-99177025babc?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]
Building Pi, [ https://substack.com/redirect/834c5629-bd8c-4550-9e24-f499b7e27bc2?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] and what makes self-modifying software so fascinating
Fred Wilson on 40 years in venture [ https://substack.com/redirect/87b865f5-7445-403b-8604-ed94ae837f24?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] — and why USV is automating itself
Martin Fowler’s updated AI coding notes [ https://substack.com/redirect/238159ab-032e-4e0c-8125-2d0e07f9f58e?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - verification, guardrails and the difference between vibe coding and agentic engineering.
Poolside’s first public models [ https://substack.com/redirect/182c5d8a-d418-48e0-bdc8-742c6d0ef1a1?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2, are now on OpenRouter. Built for agentic coding and long-horizon work.
here.now [ https://substack.com/redirect/8a118064-0afd-47df-9e4c-fc227c55325e?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] now has private cloud storage for agents as well as instant web publishing. I synced all my local memory and files (2.5k files to this with one prompt - tweet is below)
Stripe emulator skill [ https://substack.com/redirect/5cf98e16-c07c-47e8-8a42-6646df994f4f?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - offline, stateful Stripe emulation for checkout pages, webhooks and deterministic CI without secrets.
Sandcastle [ https://substack.com/redirect/398e87ef-fee9-4793-8f73-a1f0c7d30b5e?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - Matt Pocock open-sourced his software factory.
Quick [ https://substack.com/redirect/c6e43605-f643-427c-a3bb-06a9015d428a?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] by Amazon connects to email, calendar, Slack and local files to flag important stuff, summarize information and automate tasks.
Some good posts [ https://substack.com/redirect/7c5befb8-f461-4838-a526-4062edbd0262?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] on AI coding for senior engineers, harness engineering, why people hate AI, and yet, the race to adopt it.
OSSCAR [ https://substack.com/redirect/462af60a-18ea-4f4f-8772-6eafea421c1b?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - a quarterly index of the fastest-growing open-source orgs from Supabase and >commit.
Before GitHub [ https://substack.com/redirect/b4ef2140-09d3-4ad0-abdb-2ef5498fffef?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - Armin Ronacher on how open-source collaboration worked before GitHub.
ElevenMusic [ https://substack.com/redirect/b3141cbe-5e90-4a01-859e-b6e65f64d42d?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] - discover, remix, create and earn from music built on ElevenLabs’ music model.
OpenAI explained the goblins [ https://substack.com/redirect/6e421ad0-6aee-47de-ae61-8ddf84e6fb99?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]. OpenAI models have been increasingly mentioning creators in chats. They found out why, but GPT-5.5 was trained before the fix.
Andrej Karpathy at Sequoia AI Ascent [ https://substack.com/redirect/a1f751ca-7bea-49a3-99fd-3ab08581fddf?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] on vibe coding vs agentic engineering. And also linking Demis’ talk from the event too [ https://substack.com/redirect/a581ad38-d675-4c57-bd3b-9746759525ae?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ].
Ghostty is leaving GitHub [ https://substack.com/redirect/6934a1e6-7b0c-407e-b98d-fa050ffe02ab?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], with Mitchell Hashimoto writing up why.
Afters
Find me on X [ https://substack.com/redirect/d7edefb7-6c4d-4769-8c9c-8dcbb4b3c8cf?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], Linkedin [ https://substack.com/redirect/75c4506d-b697-457b-aac9-a69945a14dd0?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ], or YouTube [ https://substack.com/redirect/6e864784-a5fb-4bc1-8646-0bff49afd203?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]
Read about me [ https://substack.com/redirect/64d71e55-7df5-4655-8d44-1ba23ffa02c1?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ] and Ben’s Bites
📷 thumbnail by @keshavatearth [ https://substack.com/redirect/c2b03f00-5369-4219-ba1e-3bdc79ed6746?j=eyJ1IjoiODlwbDdnIn0.tGTUbRFxaLdUThAGF55-pc7SYA7ESP3gGmBRwUjpB8c ]
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# Headlines

Cloudflare now lets agents create accounts, buy domains and deploy. An agent can provision a Cloudflare account, start a paid subscription, register a domain, get an API token and deploy without you doing dashboard/admin gymnastics. Humans still approve terms and permissions, but the setup maze is getting agent-readable. Lots of companies are moving this way, letting less-technical people like us just get stuff built without worrying about all the services in the middle.

Stripe announced 288 things at Sessions, relevant ones: Agentic Commerce Suite, Link's wallet for agents, streaming payments and agent-ready Treasury accounts. There is also a Link CLI that gives agents one-time-use payment credentials from your Link wallet, without exposing your real card details.

Cursor SDK - build agents using the same runtime, harness and models that power Cursor.

Warp is now open-source and OpenAI is the founding sponsor for the repo. Warp's bet is that contributors bring taste/direction/verification while agents do more of the implementation work.

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM that just shipped Skills. Define any workflow in plain English and trigger it with a sentence. The AI agent executes against your full data graph with code execution, web search, and file I/O.

# My feed

The most fun I've had building apps: GPT-5.5 + GPT-Image-2

Codex masterclass workshop from AI Engineer London, plus GPT-5.5 prompt guidance

Building Pi, and what makes self-modifying software so fascinating

Fred Wilson on 40 years in venture — and why USV is automating itself

Martin Fowler's updated AI coding notes - verification, guardrails and the difference between vibe coding and agentic engineering.

Poolside's first public models, Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2, are now on OpenRouter. Built for agentic coding and long-horizon work.

here.now now has private cloud storage for agents as well as instant web publishing.

Stripe emulator skill - offline, stateful Stripe emulation for checkout pages, webhooks and deterministic CI without secrets.

Sandcastle - Matt Pocock open-sourced his software factory.

Quick by Amazon connects to email, calendar, Slack and local files to flag important stuff, summarize information and automate tasks.

Some good posts on AI coding for senior engineers, harness engineering, why people hate AI, and yet, the race to adopt it.

OSSCAR - a quarterly index of the fastest-growing open-source orgs from Supabase and >commit.

Before GitHub - Armin Ronacher on how open-source collaboration worked before GitHub.

ElevenMusic - discover, remix, create and earn from music built on ElevenLabs' music model.

OpenAI explained the goblins. OpenAI models have been increasingly mentioning creators in chats. They found out why, but GPT-5.5 was trained before the fix.

Andrej Karpathy at Sequoia AI Ascent on vibe coding vs agentic engineering. And also linking Demis' talk from the event too.

Ghostty is leaving GitHub, with Mitchell Hashimoto writing up why.

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