Max Woolf
@minimaxir.bsky.social
Senior Data Scientist at BuzzFeed in San Francisco // AI content generation ethics and R&D // plotter of pretty charts
https://minimaxir.com
https://minimaxir.com
Pinned
Max Woolf
@minimaxir.bsky.social
· Nov 13
Nano Banana can be prompt engineered for extremely nuanced AI image generation
Nano Banana allows 32,768 input tokens and I’m going to try to use them all dammit.
minimaxir.com
New blog post up: I spent a lot of time researching Nano Banana, Google's new generative AI model, and not only is it substantially better than ChatGPT, it is capable of taking extremely nuanced prompts even thousands of tokens long to generate exactly what you want. minimaxir.com/2025/11/nano...
The Matrix was a movie setting generated by AI.
January 6, 2026 at 7:28 AM
The Matrix was a movie setting generated by AI.
The people replying to this with "then just go to Threads" have clearly never used Threads.
I find it hard to square the preciousness about "why would someone ever stay on Twitter?" when everyone on this site knows that the community here intentionally chased off lots of people.
January 5, 2026 at 7:32 PM
The people replying to this with "then just go to Threads" have clearly never used Threads.
Reposted by Max Woolf
I find it hard to square the preciousness about "why would someone ever stay on Twitter?" when everyone on this site knows that the community here intentionally chased off lots of people.
January 5, 2026 at 5:41 PM
I find it hard to square the preciousness about "why would someone ever stay on Twitter?" when everyone on this site knows that the community here intentionally chased off lots of people.
thank you LinkedIn, I’m aware
January 5, 2026 at 5:28 AM
thank you LinkedIn, I’m aware
Reposted by Max Woolf
I think the AI angle of this is obscurant. It doesn’t matter that grok is “an AI” whatever you take that to mean. Suppose X hired a team of guys to photoshop the clothes off of women and children whenever anyone asks. That’s functionally identical what happening here. It’s not complicated.
A functional country would shut Grok down permanently. Like, immediately. Right now. Last week. Whatever. Just flip the switch. Obviously.
January 4, 2026 at 11:25 PM
I think the AI angle of this is obscurant. It doesn’t matter that grok is “an AI” whatever you take that to mean. Suppose X hired a team of guys to photoshop the clothes off of women and children whenever anyone asks. That’s functionally identical what happening here. It’s not complicated.
Reposted by Max Woolf
I reached out to the author of this viral Reddit post thinking there might be a story in it. He sent me an employee badge that Gemini flagged as being AI-generated and supporting documents that I suspect were also generated by AI. Be careful out there folks!
www.reddit.com/r/confession...
www.reddit.com/r/confession...
From the confession community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the confession community
www.reddit.com
January 3, 2026 at 7:55 PM
I reached out to the author of this viral Reddit post thinking there might be a story in it. He sent me an employee badge that Gemini flagged as being AI-generated and supporting documents that I suspect were also generated by AI. Be careful out there folks!
www.reddit.com/r/confession...
www.reddit.com/r/confession...
One recent question that has popped up is whether LLMs can code in Rust: they very much can despite the language’s newness, and in my experience there are very few compiling/clippy errors, which are immediately fixed by the agent.
The real annoying thing about Claude Opus 4.5 is that it's impossible to publicly say "Opus 4.5 is an order of magnitude better than coding LLMs released just months before it" without sounding like a AI hype booster clickbaiting, but it's the counterintuitive truth, to my personal frustration.
January 3, 2026 at 10:52 PM
One recent question that has popped up is whether LLMs can code in Rust: they very much can despite the language’s newness, and in my experience there are very few compiling/clippy errors, which are immediately fixed by the agent.
Reposted by Max Woolf
Jaana was a distinguished engineer at GitHub and is now a principal engineer at Google.
I expect more testimonials from accomplished engineers about productivity gains of AI in 2026.
Engineers claiming AI tools don’t work well will increasingly look like a skill issue than a problem with AI tools
I expect more testimonials from accomplished engineers about productivity gains of AI in 2026.
Engineers claiming AI tools don’t work well will increasingly look like a skill issue than a problem with AI tools
January 3, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Jaana was a distinguished engineer at GitHub and is now a principal engineer at Google.
I expect more testimonials from accomplished engineers about productivity gains of AI in 2026.
Engineers claiming AI tools don’t work well will increasingly look like a skill issue than a problem with AI tools
I expect more testimonials from accomplished engineers about productivity gains of AI in 2026.
Engineers claiming AI tools don’t work well will increasingly look like a skill issue than a problem with AI tools
Reposted by Max Woolf
For reporters, I think the right mental model for Grok is as a kind of mascot. Reporting that Grok apologizes is like reporting that Tony The Tiger apologizes. In some sense it might be accurate if the Tony's X account issued an apology in the first person, but you shouldn't take it at face value.
January 2, 2026 at 8:51 PM
For reporters, I think the right mental model for Grok is as a kind of mascot. Reporting that Grok apologizes is like reporting that Tony The Tiger apologizes. In some sense it might be accurate if the Tony's X account issued an apology in the first person, but you shouldn't take it at face value.
The real reason is because LLMs are a highly nuanced and technical topic that has been constantly evolving, but any attempt to suggest that LLMs require nuance is met with accusations of AI boosterism and are subsequently ignored. So journalists tend to go with Occam's Razor.
January 2, 2026 at 8:09 PM
The real reason is because LLMs are a highly nuanced and technical topic that has been constantly evolving, but any attempt to suggest that LLMs require nuance is met with accusations of AI boosterism and are subsequently ignored. So journalists tend to go with Occam's Razor.
The "this isn't impressive because MIDI mixers already exist and therefore Claude likely plagiarized this app" takes are unexpected and very funny.
One example of something I couldn't believe Claude Opus 4.5 could generate until it did: a full-on MIDI mixer as a terminal app, written in Rust.
December 31, 2025 at 5:42 AM
The "this isn't impressive because MIDI mixers already exist and therefore Claude likely plagiarized this app" takes are unexpected and very funny.
Reposted by Max Woolf
I used it to make 30 prototype games so far, fixed a longstanding bug in my friend’s code, made telnet clients, telnet games, article scraping/analysis tools, graphics and world editors for the games..it’s like code is fully fluid now. What I dream it can make
December 29, 2025 at 11:27 PM
I used it to make 30 prototype games so far, fixed a longstanding bug in my friend’s code, made telnet clients, telnet games, article scraping/analysis tools, graphics and world editors for the games..it’s like code is fully fluid now. What I dream it can make
One example of something I couldn't believe Claude Opus 4.5 could generate until it did: a full-on MIDI mixer as a terminal app, written in Rust.
December 29, 2025 at 11:14 PM
One example of something I couldn't believe Claude Opus 4.5 could generate until it did: a full-on MIDI mixer as a terminal app, written in Rust.
The real annoying thing about Claude Opus 4.5 is that it's impossible to publicly say "Opus 4.5 is an order of magnitude better than coding LLMs released just months before it" without sounding like a AI hype booster clickbaiting, but it's the counterintuitive truth, to my personal frustration.
December 29, 2025 at 8:20 PM
The real annoying thing about Claude Opus 4.5 is that it's impossible to publicly say "Opus 4.5 is an order of magnitude better than coding LLMs released just months before it" without sounding like a AI hype booster clickbaiting, but it's the counterintuitive truth, to my personal frustration.
X really, really does not like Simon's post which isn't what I expected but in hindsight should have expected.
Yeah, I'd be pretty furious if I got spam email from some "AI agent" thanking me for my contributions too
I dug into what happened here, turns out it's an experiment called "AI Village" which unleashes all sorts of other junk emails on the world: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/...
I dug into what happened here, turns out it's an experiment called "AI Village" which unleashes all sorts of other junk emails on the world: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/...
December 27, 2025 at 6:16 PM
X really, really does not like Simon's post which isn't what I expected but in hindsight should have expected.
December 2025 update on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/146623...
December 25, 2025 at 1:53 AM
December 2025 update on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/146623...
New blog post up: I've done thorough testing of Nano Banana Pro with *many* examples on highly complicated prompts, and Nano Banana Pro nailed most of them. That said, there are caveats, notably around cost, generation speed, and a focus on realism. minimaxir.com/2025/12/nano...
Nano Banana Pro is the best AI image generator, with caveats
The problem with Nano Banana Pro is that it’s too good.
minimaxir.com
December 22, 2025 at 6:56 PM
New blog post up: I've done thorough testing of Nano Banana Pro with *many* examples on highly complicated prompts, and Nano Banana Pro nailed most of them. That said, there are caveats, notably around cost, generation speed, and a focus on realism. minimaxir.com/2025/12/nano...
I came back to social media since my mood had finally improved but now there is more related drama so I shall continue said break
I lost sleep due to The Drama and seeing many people that I genuinely respect be assholes, so I'm taking another break from social media all-together.
December 17, 2025 at 2:11 AM
I came back to social media since my mood had finally improved but now there is more related drama so I shall continue said break
Reposted by Max Woolf
i derive essentially 0 pride or sense of accomplishment from getting all of my brackets right while writing 100 lines of boilerplate and am totally fine with losing that skill
December 16, 2025 at 7:08 PM
i derive essentially 0 pride or sense of accomplishment from getting all of my brackets right while writing 100 lines of boilerplate and am totally fine with losing that skill
if OpenAI releases a new AI image model:
a) I'll be mad I got sidetracked on my Nano Banana Pro blog post
b) I atleast have some banger image generation test cases and points of comparison
a) I'll be mad I got sidetracked on my Nano Banana Pro blog post
b) I atleast have some banger image generation test cases and points of comparison
December 16, 2025 at 4:39 PM
if OpenAI releases a new AI image model:
a) I'll be mad I got sidetracked on my Nano Banana Pro blog post
b) I atleast have some banger image generation test cases and points of comparison
a) I'll be mad I got sidetracked on my Nano Banana Pro blog post
b) I atleast have some banger image generation test cases and points of comparison
Reposted by Max Woolf
I have prototyped 5 new game ideas over the past day using Claude Code and I have not had this much fun with a computer since I learned BASIC on my Apple II when I was 9
December 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
I have prototyped 5 new game ideas over the past day using Claude Code and I have not had this much fun with a computer since I learned BASIC on my Apple II when I was 9
also, creating this package was a good reason to finally learn how to actually build Python wheels correctly for all platforms and Python versions instead of just creating a sdist like a caveman
I just released a new Python package (that's actually a Rust package): icon-to-image, which allows rendering Font Awesome icons to images *very* fast at an extremely high quality! github.com/minimaxir/ic...
GitHub - minimaxir/icon-to-image: High-performance Rust library with Python bindings for rendering Font Awesome icons to images.
High-performance Rust library with Python bindings for rendering Font Awesome icons to images. - minimaxir/icon-to-image
github.com
December 8, 2025 at 7:01 PM
also, creating this package was a good reason to finally learn how to actually build Python wheels correctly for all platforms and Python versions instead of just creating a sdist like a caveman
I just released a new Python package (that's actually a Rust package): icon-to-image, which allows rendering Font Awesome icons to images *very* fast at an extremely high quality! github.com/minimaxir/ic...
GitHub - minimaxir/icon-to-image: High-performance Rust library with Python bindings for rendering Font Awesome icons to images.
High-performance Rust library with Python bindings for rendering Font Awesome icons to images. - minimaxir/icon-to-image
github.com
December 8, 2025 at 5:23 PM
I just released a new Python package (that's actually a Rust package): icon-to-image, which allows rendering Font Awesome icons to images *very* fast at an extremely high quality! github.com/minimaxir/ic...