Simon Willison's blog offers a mix of technical tutorials, data analysis projects, and reflections on technology and society. With a focus on Python, SQL, and web development, Simon shares insights into building web applications, working with data, and exploring emerging technologies. Developers can learn about data visualization, API design, and software engineering best practices, gaining inspiration and practical knowledge to advance their careers.

Simon Willison

Starlette 1.0 has been released, marking a major milestone for the Python ASGI framework that underpins FastAPI. Simon Willison explores the key breaking changes in 1.0, notably the new lifespan context manager replacing on_startup/on_shutdown hooks. He then demonstrates using Claude's 'Skills' feature to generate a skill document from the Starlette 1.0 GitHub repo, enabling Claude to produce correct 1.0-compatible code despite its training data predating the release. The result is a working task management app (with projects, tasks, comments, and labels) built by Claude using Starlette 1.0, aiosqlite, and Jinja2 — with Claude also writing and running its own tests.

Experimenting with Starlette 1.0 with Claude skills