Claude Sonnet 5.5: faster mid-tier coding without a list-price rise
Sonnet 5.5 kept Sonnet 5's $2 and $10 token prices, then had its cache-read price halved. What that does to coding costs, and where Opus 5.5 still leads.
5 min read
Blog tag
#AI coding tools
Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Cursor and the tools developers use every day.
Codex made GPT-6.1 Sol the default: what teams should change
Codex 0.161.0 switched its default model to GPT-6.1 Sol and made Daybreak cyber routing opt-in. What changed, what it costs, and what to pin in CI and config.
5 min read
Gemini 4 Argon is generally available: price, limits and the 1 December change
Gemini 4 Argon launched on 13 October 2026 at an introductory API price that doubles on 1 December. What it costs, what Google claims, and what to plan for.
6 min read
Claude Code hooks can now fail closed when enforcement breaks
Claude Code v2.1.295 adds onFailure: block for command and HTTP hooks so missing scripts, timeouts and unexpected exits deny the action instead of failing open.
GPT-6.1 Sol: near-Astra coding performance at one-fifth the token price
OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol lists at $2/$10 per million tokens against Astra's $10/$50. What that changes for default coding models, caching and harness cost.
Copilot local sandboxing is generally available: what it actually restricts
Copilot local sandboxing is GA in the CLI, app and VS Code Agent Host. What OS limits cover, leave out, and how they sit with policy.
4 min read
Claude Haiku 5.5 for coding sub-agents: what the price cut changes
Anthropic's Haiku 5.5 makes high-volume subagent work cheap enough to measure. When to route there, and when Sonnet still leads.
Introducing the SpanDock blog
What the SpanDock blog will publish: product news, step-by-step guides and researched articles on AI coding tools, MCP, cost and security.
2 min read
Download counts aren't trust: a lesson for AI coding agents
A malicious copy of a popular maths library reached six million downloads in two days. Why agents that pick packages are exposed, and what limits the damage.
3 min read
Capturing prompts in AI telemetry is a privacy decision, not a setting
AI coding tools can export prompts, tool arguments and full API bodies. Why it's off by default, the risks of switching it on, and how to decide.
The harness sets the bill: why the same model costs more in some agents
New coding-agent benchmarks show one model scoring and costing very differently across agent harnesses. What that means for evaluating AI coding tools.
3 min read
Sandboxing coding agents: what the built-in sandboxes do and don't cover
Claude Code and Codex both ship operating-system sandboxes for agent commands. What they restrict, what runs outside them, and settings worth enforcing.
4 min read
Browse by tag
- #Security (55)
- #Agents (41)
- #AI coding tools (38)
- #LLM costs (23)
- #MCP (16)
- #Evaluation (14)
- #Observability (12)
- #Compliance (11)
- #Enterprise (9)
- #Platform engineering (9)
- #Data privacy (8)
- #DevOps (7)
- #Model routing (7)
- #Open-weight models (7)
- #Research (7)
- #Tutorials (6)
- #Code review (4)
- #Developer productivity (4)
- #Guardrails (4)
- #Networking (4)
- #OpenTelemetry (4)
- #Budgets (3)
- #Prompt engineering (3)
- #Self-hosting (3)
- #MCP gateway (2)
- #Release notes (2)
- #Skills (1)
- #Testing (1)