I’ve never run a marathon.

Based on the visceral reaction I still have from thinking about the time I ran three miles as a sophomore in high school, I can imagine the last mile is pretty grueling.

Even in the age of AI, the last mile of software development is still a long mile.  For a big project, the working prototype you can build overnight remains a far cry from production software.

That was certainly true for Blades. It isn’t everything I want it to become yet. But this beta has a lot packed into it, and nearly every feature and screen went through multiple iterations before landing where it is today.

AI can carry you through the first 25 miles at a ridiculous pace. You still have to test everything, sweat the details, and push through the last mile.

It’s why so many people building software seem to be working harder than ever. The horizon of possibility has shifted. Any single task can be completed in a fraction of the time - but that means there are a lot more tasks getting completed, more ambitious projects, and a lot more last miles to tread.

No wonder the AI labs are calling for pacing.

Enough complaining, though. You were promised a shot this week, so here it is:

Blades is officially open for beta testing.

Blades is my attempt to bring a little joy to managing your screen time and being more present throughout the day. I hope you enjoy it.

And for those of you who aren’t terminally online - “touch grass” is internet slang for when someone needs to get offline and back to the real world. You’ll quickly see how that inspired this project.

I’m still refining… well, pretty much everything. But I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know what you think.

You’ll hit a paywall during onboarding, but purchases made in this TestFlight beta are free. If you haven’t used TestFlight before, the link will walk you through installing Apple’s beta-testing app.

Go touch grass,

Jeremy

Meta gets in on the personal assistant game: Meta’s Muse can browse, connect to apps, send email, complete forms, and book travel. We’ve got a new contender for most user-friendly assistant, and the reviews are positive.

The best image model got an upgrade: ChatGPT Images 2.5 is faster, sharper, and more consistent across repeated edits. The useful breakthrough is targeted editing: change one detail without the rest of the image wandering off and growing a sixth finger.

The OpenAI stack: The Agents API, ChatGPT for Financial Services, and GPT-Live-1 add the execution layer, specialized workplace, and natural voice interface around Astra. OpenAI is assembling the stack needed to put the model to work everywhere.

Frontier performance, clearance-rack prices: Cognition’s SWE-2 approaches top coding-model performance while costing dramatically less, and it completes work in fewer turns than its predecessor. And DeepSeek’s smaller V4.1-Flash reportedly beats V4-Pro on performance, speed, cost, and runtime.

Give Astra a longer memory: Turn on Codex’s experimental context management and Astra can preserve notes and recover earlier messages and tool results during long-running work. Spend less time reminding your agent what it was supposed to be doing.

OpenAI hops on the academy train: OpenAI Academy now offers 14 free, self-paced courses covering practical AI use, agents, Codex, APIs, organizational adoption, and education. A more organized way to learn than chasing random posts on X.

You’re holding Astra back: Astra needs less scaffolding than earlier coding agents, so bloated skills, AGENTS.md rules, and overly specific prompts can now waste context or constrain the model. Audit old instructions, keep skills lean, and define completion clearly when you want Astra to persist.

So you’re saying there’s a chance: First, Jacob Coxon resigns from Anthropic in a viral post and says neither OpenAI nor Anthropic are acting responsibly. Then, Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger personally estimates the chance of AI killing everyone above 10% within the next decade and says the lab still lacks a plan for aligning superintelligence. Which brings us to…

Pump the brakes: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says recursive self-improvement is accelerating and warns that a misaligned agent swarm could become capable of taking over the internet within 6–12 months. His call for pacing the frontier lays out a plan for how to slow down. Sam & Elon agree.

The tip of the iceberg: OpenAI says agents powered by a model “significantly more capable” than GPT-6 Astra may have solved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem. OpenAI is already teasing something far beyond the model it just released.

Astra creates Astra: An interactive render of the solar system.

You are the moat: Trying to predict which jobs AI will kill or create misses the point. Titles and tools will change - curiosity, judgment, determination, and the willingness to adapt are the durable advantage.