Cut scope and release 0.26 (non-alpha) with tools

[simonw]

The tools milestones are still pretty hefty:

• https://github.com/simonw/llm/milestone/12
• https://github.com/simonw/llm/milestone/13

I think I should cut scope to get a non-alpha release out ASAP. I'm fine punting most of the above to later releases - the key thing is not to ship anything that I later want to change in a backwards-incompatible way.

[simonw]

I renamed https://github.com/simonw/llm/milestone/12 to "LLM tools non-alpha release (0.27)"

[simonw]

I've done everything in milestone 12 - last issue was:

• "llm -c" should automatically include tools from "llm -T" in the initial prompt #1020

It doesn't feel quite right for release yet. In particular the lack of a mechanism for specifying a collection of tools feels a bit glaring, they are inconvenient to use without:

• Mechanism to bundle related tools together #1058

I'm tempted by these as well:

• Tools need a configuration mechanism #1057
• Class mechanism allowing related tools to be bundled and configured #1059

[simonw]

I decided to do this one too:

• llm logs filter options for seeing logged prompts that used specific tools #1013

[simonw]

I still need to do the new logging stuff:

• New design for logs involving tool calls (and maybe tool classes) #1080
• Toolbox instantiation should be logged to DB when logging toolbox methods #1089

But I'm going to ship one last alpha now so I can ship plugins that use the new Toolbox mechanism.

[simonw]

Trying a devious trick to generate release notes:

llm -m g25f -f https://github.com/simonw/llm/compare/0.26a0...main.diff -s 'describe changes for a changelog'
# That worked but was not in the right style, so I added
llm -c 'Reformat that to look like the example here, referencing these relevant issues' -f /tmp/example.txt -f /tmp/issues.txt

Using files from here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/f68e1576d8b5ee706760e176b1365e75 - one with an example entry and another with rendered GitHub issue titles for all the issues, extracted with https://observablehq.com/@simonw/extract-issue-numbers-from-pasted-text from the select-all on the 0.26a0...main page.

Output here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/8612f9aaa205a4a2a19994602b18d157#026-yyyy-mm-dd

[simonw]

Wow, it did a REALLY good job on those release notes. Only took me 10 minutes to knock them into final shape, and there was a lot of stuff in them: https://github.com/simonw/llm/blob/15a497635d0f3402defcf53bda8f13b4b63e21b5/docs/changelog.md#026a1-2025-05-25 and https://llm.datasette.io/en/latest/changelog.html#a1-2025-05-25

I had to manually add the "thanks, X" references, but I didn't feed those into the model. Could probably figure that out in the future, maybe send in a list of PRs?

[simonw]

This is pretty great! I installed the latest alpha and:

llm install llm-anthropic==0.16a2                          
llm chat -T QuickJS -m claude-4-sonnet --td --chain-limit 0

And got this:

Chatting with anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-0
Type 'exit' or 'quit' to exit
Type '!multi' to enter multiple lines, then '!end' to finish
Type '!edit' to open your default editor and modify the prompt
Type '!fragment <my_fragment> [<another_fragment> ...]' to insert one or more fragments
> Do something fun with QuickJS, write short code so I can see what you are doing faster
I'll create a fun little animation using QuickJS! Let me make a simple ASCII art bouncing ball: 
Tool call: QuickJS_execute_javascript({'javascript': '// Bouncing ball animation\nlet position = 0;\nlet direction = 1;\nlet frame = 0;\n\nfunction drawBall() {\n    // Create a line with the ball (●) at different positions\n    let line = "";\n    for (let i = 0; i < 20; i++) {\n        if (i === position) {\n            line += "●";\n        } else {\n            line += " ";\n        }\n    }\n    return `|${line}|`;\n}\n\nfunction animate() {\n    console.log(`Frame ${frame}: ${drawBall()}`);\n    \n    // Move the ball\n    position += direction;\n    \n    // Bounce off walls\n    if (position >= 19) {\n        direction = -1;\n    } else if (position <= 0) {\n        direction = 1;\n    }\n    \n    frame++;\n}\n\n// Show 10 frames of animation\nfor (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {\n    animate();\n}\n\nconsole.log("\\n🎉 Bouncing ball complete! The ball bounced back and forth!");'})
  Error: ReferenceError: 'console' is not defined
      at animate (<input>:20)
      at <eval> (<input>:37)


Oops! Let me fix that - QuickJS doesn't have console by default. Let me create the animation differently: 
Tool call: QuickJS_execute_javascript({'javascript': '// Bouncing ball animation\nlet position = 0;\nlet direction = 1;\nlet frames = [];\n\nfunction drawBall() {\n    let line = "";\n    for (let i = 0; i < 15; i++) {\n        if (i === position) {\n            line += "●";\n        } else {\n            line += "·";\n        }\n    }\n    return `|${line}|`;\n}\n\n// Generate animation frames\nfor (let frame = 0; frame < 12; frame++) {\n    frames.push(`Frame ${frame}: ${drawBall()}`);\n    \n    // Move the ball\n    position += direction;\n    \n    // Bounce off walls\n    if (position >= 14) {\n        direction = -1;\n    } else if (position <= 0) {\n        direction = 1;\n    }\n}\n\n// Return the complete animation\nframes.join(\'\\n\') + \'\\n\\n🎾 Ball bounced \' + (frames.length) + \' times!\';'})
  Error: SyntaxError: redeclaration of 'position'
      at <eval> (<input>:1)


Let me reset and try again: 
Tool call: QuickJS_reset_context({})
  null

 
Tool call: QuickJS_execute_javascript({'javascript': '// Fun color generator with ASCII art!\nfunction generatePattern(size) {\n    let pattern = "";\n    let symbols = ["★", "♦", "♠", "♣", "♥", "●", "◆", "▲"];\n    \n    for (let row = 0; row < size; row++) {\n        for (let col = 0; col < size; col++) {\n            // Create a pattern based on position\n            let index = (row + col) % symbols.length;\n            pattern += symbols[index] + " ";\n        }\n        pattern += "\\n";\n    }\n    return pattern;\n}\n\n// Generate a fun 6x6 pattern\nlet artPattern = generatePattern(6);\n\n// Create a simple "dice roll" simulator\nfunction rollDice() {\n    return Math.floor(Math.random() * 6) + 1;\n}\n\nlet rolls = [];\nfor (let i = 0; i < 5; i++) {\n    rolls.push(rollDice());\n}\n\n// Combine everything\n`🎨 ASCII Art Pattern:\\n${artPattern}\\n🎲 Random dice rolls: ${rolls.join(\', \')}\\n\\n✨ Sum of rolls: ${rolls.reduce((a,b) => a+b, 0)}`;'})
  🎨 ASCII Art Pattern:
  ★ ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ● 
  ♦ ♠ ♣ ♥ ● ◆ 
  ♠ ♣ ♥ ● ◆ ▲ 
  ♣ ♥ ● ◆ ▲ ★ 
  ♥ ● ◆ ▲ ★ ♦ 
  ● ◆ ▲ ★ ♦ ♠ 

  🎲 Random dice rolls: 6, 4, 1, 1, 6

  ✨ Sum of rolls: 18

That was fun! Let me do one more quick thing - a simple word scrambler: 
Tool call: QuickJS_execute_javascript({'javascript': "// Word scrambler game!\nfunction scrambleWord(word) {\n    let letters = word.split('');\n    // Fisher-Yates shuffle\n    for (let i = letters.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {\n        let j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));\n        [letters[i], letters[j]] = [letters[j], letters[i]];\n    }\n    return letters.join('');\n}\n\nlet words = ['JAVASCRIPT', 'COMPUTER', 'RAINBOW', 'ADVENTURE', 'MYSTERY'];\nlet scrambled = words.map(word => `${word} → ${scrambleWord(word)}`);\n\n`🔤 Word Scramble Game!\\n\\n${scrambled.join('\\n')}\\n\\n🧩 Can you unscramble them all?`;"})
  🔤 Word Scramble Game!

  JAVASCRIPT → AVSTIRAJPC
  COMPUTER → EUPTMROC
  RAINBOW → ABIWRON
  ADVENTURE → NRTVEEAUD
  MYSTERY → STEYYMR

  🧩 Can you unscramble them all?

Perfect! I created some fun little programs:

1. **ASCII Art Pattern Generator** - Creates colorful patterns with symbols
2. **Dice Roller** - Simulates rolling 5 dice and shows the sum  
3. **Word Scrambler** - Takes words and randomly shuffles their letters

QuickJS is great for quick experiments like this! The persistent context means I can build on previous code, and it handles JavaScript really well. Want me to try something else fun? Maybe a simple maze generator or a number guessing game? 🎮

[simonw]

OK, everything in the (trimmed) milestone is now done!

Still need:

• Release notes
• A final review of the documentation
• A release blog post

[simonw]

I pushed the new https://github.com/simonw/llm-tools-quickjs/releases/tag/0.1a1 which uses llm chat -T QuickJS and can maintain state.

[simonw]

The tool plugins that exist so far are:

• https://github.com/simonw/llm-tools-simpleeval
• https://github.com/simonw/llm-tools-datasette (really simple)
• https://github.com/simonw/llm-tools-quickjs (demonstrates state)
• https://github.com/simonw/llm-tools-sqlite (now rewritten to use a Toolbox)

And the built-in llm -T llm_version "show version" tool.

[simonw]

Got Claude Sonnet 4 to write me a llm_time() function to go in core: https://gist.github.com/simonw/d3d4de6bdfc998716662c206437cf053

[simonw]

Fun demo:

llm --functions '
import httpx

def search_blog(q):
    "Search Simon Willison blog"
    return httpx.get("https://simonwillison.net/dashboard/search.json", params={"q": q}).json()
' 'what is the deal with pelicans?' --td -s 'use search'