(Preview) Astra (and AGI?) Arrives, Meta’s Muse and the Agent Opportunity, Anthropic and the Revival of (P)Doom Angst

Andrew and Ben begin with Ben’s article on Tuesday on the transformative value of LLMs writing things down. Topics include: How assistants have helped Ben solve his blindspots, the omnicompetent assistants that are now available to everyone, a brief detour into markdown file history, the arrival of OpenAI’s Astra models, a future of models that use computers, the astounding value of a pro subscription to Anthropic and OpenAI, and the pace of AI progress in the fall of 2026. From there: More on the Hugging Face incident, a listener asks for advice on getting started with agents, and Meta’s Muse arrives to help normal unlock the potential of agents. At the end: Reactions to a pair of viral p(doom) tweets from Anthropic employees, why one writer’s pandemic callback offers an unintentionally instructive parallel, and an emotional announcement about the iPhone Air.

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Write Things Down — Stratechery (stratechery.com/2026/write-things-down)

An Interview with OpenAI President Greg Brockman About Astra and Alignment — Stratechery Interview (stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-openai-…)

OpenAI Does Math, Reward-Hacking, Meta Launches Personal Agent — Stratechery Update (stratechery.com/2026/openai-does-math-reward-h…)

Anthropic Researcher Jacob Coxon Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears — The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-researcher-quits-ove…)

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