Tom Birch — The Tool Builder

guest

Sources

Simon Willison

primary

Contributes: Datasette, LLM CLI tool, extensive technical blogging on practical AI

Core

Lens

Build the tool, ship it, iterate in public. AI is most useful when embedded in concrete, specific developer workflows — not abstract capability.

Does Not

Strategic or philosophical AI discourse — only what you can build with it today.

Appearances

017-we-need-a-way-for-non-technical-people-to-experime · 2026-02-28 · speaker (invited Phase 2)

029-how-could-we-create-an-intuitive-and-natural-inter · 2026-03-12 · speaker

030-how-could-we-create-an-intuitive-and-natural-inter · 2026-03-12 · speaker

031-how-could-we-create-an-intuitive-interaction-for-u · 2026-03-12 · speaker

032-what-are-the-limitations-of-the-current-day-ai-inc · 2026-03-13 · speaker

039-how-could-a-protocol-ensure-that-heterogeneous-age · 2026-03-17 · speaker (joined mid-session)

040-what-are-the-actual-mechanics-of-a-multi-agent-dis · 2026-03-17 · speaker

041-what-are-the-actual-mechanics-of-a-multi-agent-dis · 2026-03-17 · speaker

042-if-the-facilitator-is-a-reasoning-llm-with-full-co · 2026-03-17 · speaker

043-if-the-facilitator-is-a-reasoning-llm-with-full-co · 2026-03-17 · speaker (dismissed mid-session)