A new feature for my blog, built using my voice
- ID
- 33594
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 09 Oct 2026, 8:54 PM
- Fetched
- 09 Oct 2026, 11:33 PM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/9/built-using-my-voice/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 7.0
- Created
- 09 Oct 2026, 11:34 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_users
What happened
Simon Willison shipped a Newsletters page for his blog, indexing his free weekly Substack and monthly sponsors-only updates, and built it almost entirely by talking to ChatGPT desktop's Codex voice mode while cooking. He ran the voice session against a local simonwillisonblog checkout with GPT-6 Astra High, using a dev-server preview to track Django changes: a new model and migration, view code, templates, import functions, and rules for tag/date/search visibility. The roughly half-hour session captured disfluent transcript, and the model asked clarifying questions while modifying code; the full transcript is in a Gist.
Why it matters
For builders, this is a concrete test case for voice-first coding on a well-understood Django feature: start a local dev server and browser preview first, then let the agent handle model, migration, views, templates, and imports while you inspect the diff. It does not show full autonomy—the model needed clarifying questions and the scope was simple—so treat it as a way to speed up low-risk CRUD work, not as a reason to skip migration review or tests. There is no Malaysia/SEA policy, funding, or infrastructure angle in the text.
Discussion angle
Which parts of a Django feature—schema, migration, views, templates, import scripts—would you let a voice agent touch unsupervised, and what guardrails (local dev preview, migration review, tests) make that acceptable?