Simon Willison

Independent software developer and writer (co-creator of the Django web framework, creator of the Datasette and LLM open-source tools) who has built one of the most closely-read independent blogs tracking day-to-day AI model releases and developer-facing detail.

Matters to this vault as a named Tier-2 source: his write-up of OpenAI's o1 launch (simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/12/openai-o1/) was the sourcing basis for claim-openai-hid-o1-raw-chain-of-thought-partly-for-competitive-advantage at its original 2026-07-12 promotion, used because the OpenAI primary page 403'd to direct fetch at the time. A 2026-08-24 capture recovered the primary directly, so the claim-note no longer depends on Willison's relay — but the earlier promotion is a small case study in Tier-2 sourcing done right: verbatim quotes carried through the relay, the interpretive gap flagged rather than smoothed over, and the flag actually resolved once the primary became reachable.

References

• claim-openai-hid-o1-raw-chain-of-thought-partly-for-competitive-advantage