💻 Spotify says its best developers don’t code anymore

What if top engineers didn’t have to write code anymore? Spotify says some of its most senior developers are now building features just by chatting with an internal AI tool, which delivers production-ready updates in real time. Let’s dive in!

In today’s insights:

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Evolving AI: Spotify says its top engineers now ship features using AI without writing code themselves.

Spotify says some of its most senior engineers have stopped writing code entirely, leaning on an internal AI system called Honk. The tool lets engineers request bug fixes or new features through chat, then receive production-ready builds in real time. Spotify credits this setup for shipping over 50 product updates in 2025, including AI playlists and audiobook discovery features, all while improving internal model training using unique music data.

Spotify is treating coding like a chat workflow: describe the change, get a working build back, ship it fast. If that “Honk + Claude Code” loop holds up in real teams, it pulls software work up a level from typing to reviewing, testing, and making calls on tradeoffs, with release cycles shrinking along the way. The upside is obvious for product velocity and feature output. The pressure point is quality control: security checks, audit trails, and spam resistance now sit on top of AI outputs, not human code habits.

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Evolving AI: A senior Anthropic safety researcher exits with a cryptic public letter on risk.

An Anthropic researcher who led safeguards work since early 2024 announced his resignation through a vague, poetry-filled letter shared publicly. He described repeated tension between stated values and real decisions, warning that global pressures are rising faster than collective judgment. The move arrives during wider industry unease, as new AI tools raise fears around labor displacement, market disruption, and how much responsibility builders truly hold.

Read the letter here →

When senior safety researchers start leaving in public, vague ways, it usually signals tension that runs deeper than one company. Over the past year, AI labs have been shipping faster, adding plugins, agents, and workplace features that touch real jobs and real markets, while internal guardrails struggle to keep up. What’s striking here is not the poetry, but the pattern: safety teams feel pressure, product timelines win, and concerns surface only once someone walks out. For users and businesses betting workflows on models from Anthropic and tools like Claude, this is a reminder that trust in AI systems depends as much on internal culture as on benchmarks or policy posts.

Evolving AI: Coinbase is giving AI agents their own crypto wallets to trade and pay without human approval.

Coinbase has launched Agentic Wallets, a crypto wallet built for AI agents rather than humans. These wallets allow software to hold assets, execute trades, and make blockchain payments on their own. Using Coinbase’s developer stack and the x402 payments protocol, AI agents can move value between systems without manual approval. Guardrails like spending limits, session controls, compliance screening, and gasless trading on Base help keep automation practical for continuous use.

This is the next step from “AI suggests” to “AI pays and executes,” and it shows where fintech is heading: software that can run a budget, buy data, place trades, and settle bills on its own. With Agentic Wallets, an agent can top up USDC, pay per API call, or rebalance a portfolio overnight, then keep going via gasless trading on Base, all inside guardrails like spending caps and compliance checks. If teams adopt this, it could turn agent workflows into closed loops where payment is just another tool call.

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QUICK HITS

🤝 ByteDance Is Developing Its Own AI Chip, in Talks With Samsung for Manufacturing.

📉 Fear Grows That AI Is Permanently Eliminating Jobs.

🤖 Google says attackers used 100,000+ prompts to try to clone AI chatbot Gemini.

👋 OpenAI Fires Top Safety Exec Who Opposed ChatGPT’s “Adult Mode”.

🤖 Roboworx adds AI-powered predictive analytics to its Robot Service Manager software.

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