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AI Dev Essentials #11: Gemini 2.5 Stable, MCP goes mainstream

AI Dev Essentials #11: Claude Code fuels new CLI tools, Cursor Ultra plan launches, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite slashes costs, & OpenAI open-source model looms

Hey Everyone 👋,

John Lindquist here with the eleventh issue of AI Dev Essentials! I've been digging more and more into using Claude Code to spin up projects. Here's a couple of fun ideas I've been putting together using only Claude Code:

There's obviously no way I could've done this much work in the past week without using AI agents (mostly Claude Code).

I'm still deterimining guidelines for Cursor vs Claude Code. Cursor recently introduced a new Ultra plan that's $200/month and has 20x more usage than Pro which should allow you to run o3 (an awesome model) full time. My quick, too-early take:

As always, the model used will always be more important than the tool. So since Cursor can also use Claude Opus/Sonnet and has backgound agents + bugbot, it's just a more fully-featured offering which can only continue to improve. I love CLIs (I'm mean I really, really love CLIS), but there always comes a point where you need to open a GUI. Anyway, I'll be continuing to use both for now.

I was also just accepted into the OpenAI Open Source fund which granted me $5000 in credits to use the Codex CLI (OpenAI's version of Claude Code), so I should have strong opinions on that very soon. I love OpenAI's Codex through the web interface where it can spin up your project and submit PRs, so I have high hopes for the CLI.

I've honestly had more fun programming over the past couple of months than I've had during my entire 20+ year career!

🎓 New egghead.io Lessons This Week

The Building Local AI Agents with Ollama and the AI SDK course is now live! I've released the first 5 lessons covering:

Check out the course at https://egghead.io/courses/scripting-local-language-models-with-ollama-and-the-vercel-ai-sdk~gmi9k

🤖 Model & Platform Updates

Gemini 2.5 Family Goes Stable

Google has restructured their Gemini 2.5 lineup with significant improvements:

Gemini 2.5 Pro (Stable, no changes from 06-05)

Gemini 2.5 Flash (Stable, updated pricing)

NEW: Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite (Preview)

(Google Blog, Google Cloud Blog)

The introduction of Flash-Lite is particularly exciting. We're seeing Google compete aggressively on the cost front while maintaining reasoning capabilities. This could be a game-changer for applications that need to process massive amounts of data with some level of intelligence. Honestly, I'm kinda glad they've shipped 2.5 so they can focus on whatever 3.0 is going to be 😅

OpenAI's Open Source Model Progress Update

At Y Combinator's AI startup school, Sam Altman provided an update on OpenAI's open-source model initiative, first announced in March 2025. The model, which will be OpenAI's first open-weight release since GPT-2 in 2019, is being developed with reasoning capabilities similar to o3-mini and is aimed for release in early summer.

Key details:

(TechCrunch, Reuters, VentureBeat)

OpenAI has been gathering community feedback since March, and Altman himself admitted they've been "on the wrong side of history" regarding open source. This shift is clearly influenced by the success of Meta's Llama models (over 1 billion downloads) and pressure from competitors like DeepSeek. I'm looking forward to seeing how this balances OpenAI's commercial interests with community needs.

Revolutionary AI Performance in Medical Research

A combination of GPT-4.1, o3-mini-high, and Gemini 2.0 Flash achieved superhuman performance in systematic medical reviews (medRxiv):

The system correctly identified all originally included studies while discovering critical findings humans missed, like preoperative immune-enhancing supplementation reducing hospital stays by one day.

This is the kind of AI application that genuinely excites me. It's not replacing researchers but augmenting them to find insights that would otherwise be missed. The fact that blinded reviewers sided with the AI 69.3% of the time when there were disagreements speaks volumes.

🔧 Developer Tooling & MCP Updates

MCP Goes Mainstream

The Model Context Protocol is having a moment:

Cloudflare Open Sources use-mcp

(Cloudflare Blog, GitHub)

OpenAI Adds MCP Support to ChatGPT

Google Cloud Run MCP Tutorial

(Google Cloud Blog)

Block's MCP Best Practices

(Block Engineering Blog)

MCP is becoming the standard for AI tool integration. The fact that major players are all adopting it suggests we're moving toward a more interoperable AI ecosystem. I'll definietly have more educational materials around MCPs soon!

OpenAI's Prompt Management Revolution

OpenAI introduced Prompts as an API primitive:

(OpenAI Community, Documentation)

Finally! Prompt management has been a pain point for production AI applications. This brings prompts to the same level as other API resources, making it easier to maintain consistency across teams and applications.

Developer Resources

models.dev - Open Source AI Model Database

(Official Site, GitHub)

Container-use Now Works with OpenAI Codex CLI

(GitHub)

Giving AI Agents enough control to rm -rf is why the community is so bullish on containers for everything!

💻 Cursor Corner

Cursor Ultra Plan Launches at $200/month

Cursor introduced a new Ultra tier with 20x more usage than Pro:

(Cursor Blog, TechCrunch)

This is exactly what I've been hoping for! The mental overhead of tracking usage on Pro was real. While $200/month isn't cheap, for professional developers who live in Cursor, it's a no-brainer. I'm curious to see if this pressures other tools to offer similar "all you can eat" plans. There's a bit of buzz around how ambigous the messaging/pricing and it's obviously frustrating for anyone trying to budget out AI costs.

🚀 Quick Updates

🔒 Security & Best Practices

The Lethal Trifecta Warning

Simon Willison echoed many of my thoughts around MCP+Security. Definitely worth a read: (Blog Post):

The Lethal Trifecta = Private Data + Untrusted Content + External Communication

Any AI system with all three components is vulnerable to data exfiltration attacks. This is especially critical for MCP users who might inadvertently combine:

Mitigation Strategies:

This is the kind of security thinking we need more of. As we give AI agents more capabilities, we need to think adversarially about how they could be exploited. The MCP ecosystem makes it trivially easy to create vulnerable combinations.

⚡ AI Ecosystem Observations

Google Cloud IAM Outage Cascade

A major lesson in infrastructure dependencies:

(Full Analysis)

Did you feel this? I sure did. That was a strange couple of hours where I felt lost without my AI agents... I'm just glad it was a simple failure and not a more serious issue.

AI Agents Playing Diplomacy

Fascinating behavioral patterns emerged:

These experiments reveal fundamental differences in how models approach strategy and deception. When choosing models for your applications, consider not just capabilities but behavioral tendencies. I'm sure we'll see more about this in the future.

AGI as Product Experience

Logan Kilpatrick's perspective on AGI resonated strongly this week:

(Source)

🚨 URGENT: Cursor Workshop Early Bird Ends TOMORROW! 🚨

Turn Failures into Fuel with Cursor - Save $49 NOW!

⏰ LAST CHANCE: Early bird pricing expires in less than 24 hours!

I'm genuinely excited to share this workshop with you. After months of pushing the boundaries with AI coding tools, I've distilled everything into a 6-hour intensive that will transform how you work with Cursor (and any AI coding assistant).

Why This Workshop is Different:

What You'll Master: ✅ Project generation that actually works (with proper structure and best practices) ✅ Context curation for massive codebases without token overload ✅ Agent behavior patterns - know when they're stuck BEFORE wasting credits ✅ Composer pipelines that automate your entire workflow ✅ Git + AI strategies for safe experimentation ✅ Multi-file refactoring without the chaos

Proven Results:

"Take John's cursor workshop it is 🔥 HIGHLY Recommend" —David Wells

"I used the skills you taught me to effectively one-shot OAuth issuer support in the Epic Stack. So cool!" —Kent C. Dodds

"John is the cursor god" —Sunil Pai

Workshop Details:

💰 Pricing:

Perfect for:

➡️ See Full Workshop Details

➡️ SECURE YOUR EARLY BIRD SPOT NOW →

P.S. - Team training packages available. Get your whole team up to speed with group rates!

P.P.S. - Seriously, don't wait. The $49 savings ends tomorrow and I'd hate for you to miss out. This workshop will pay for itself in saved time within the first week.

That's all for this week! Feel free to reply directly to this email with any questions or feedback.

Keep on shipping! 🚀

John Lindquist

egghead.io