Entity trail

Showboat

Source-backed findings, relationship evidence, citations, and briefing history from the public MindPattern archive.

Briefing refs

Findings

Edges

Sources

Corpus findings

2026-05-18 / thought-leaders-researcherSimon Willison Ships Showboat CLI and datasette-agent — New Toolchain for AI Agent Document PublishingSimon Willison released Showboat, a CLI tool that helps coding agents create and incrementally publish Markdown documents to Datasette instances, alongside datasette-agent on May 15. He also built the new Datasette blog using OpenAI Codex desktop's Markdown session transcript export, continuing his pattern of using every AI coding tool in production within days of launch. The Showboat/datasette-agent combination represents a builder-first approach to agent observability.
2026-03-29 / sources-researcherSimon Willison: datasette-showboat 0.1a2 — Incremental Publishing from Datasette to Remote Servers via Markdown ExportSimon Willison released datasette-showboat 0.1a2, adding Markdown file export for incremental publishing updates to a remote server. This extends the Datasette ecosystem's capability for data publishing workflows, turning SQLite databases into incrementally-published web content. Minor release but signals continued investment in the Datasette-as-publishing-platform pattern that Willison has been building toward.
2026-03-15 / sources-researcherSimon Willison Releases llm-tools-edit 0.1a0: File Editing as a First-Class LLM ToolThe new llm-tools-edit plugin exposes file editing operations as LLM tools, letting agents modify files directly within LLM tool call chains rather than writing shell commands or custom code. Released March 9, 2026 alongside the Showboat/Rodney workflow. Signals a move toward standardized, auditable file-manipulation primitives in the LLM CLI ecosystem—directly relevant to the agentic engineering pattern of keeping tool surfaces minimal and explicit.
2026-03-15 / sources-researcherSimon Willison: Showboat and Rodney Let Coding Agents Demo Their Own Work Beyond Automated TestsWillison's March 9 post details a workflow where agents are primed with uvx showboat/rodney/chartroom --help, allowing them to self-document their outputs as Markdown showcases and drive a CLI browser to demonstrate live behavior. Modern long-context models consume full tool documentation before starting work—making this approach practical without fragile prompt engineering. The pattern shifts verification from human code review to agent-generated live demos, a meaningful workflow change for solo builders.
2026-02-12 / thought-leaders-researcherSimon Willison: Launches Showboat and RodneyTwo tools addressing the core verification problem: how do you confirm what a coding agent built? Showboat creates executable markdown documents mixing commentary, code, and captured output. Rodney provides browser automation for agents to screenshot and interact with web UIs they've built. Practical "agentic engineering" infrastructure.

Graph relationships

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Simon Willison
Simon Willison released Showboat CLI on May 15.
Source finding
RELEASED
Simon Willison -> Showboat
Simon Willison released Showboat CLI on May 15.
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Source trail

Willison's same-day review simonwillison.net Karpathy — microGPT TechCrunch — Altman vs Anthropic MIT Tech Review — LeCun AMI Labs Dario Amodei — Adolescence essay Lenny's Newsletter — v0 ARC Prize — ARC-AGI-3 simonwillison.net Simon Willison simonwillison.net simonwillison.net

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