Slack introduces Surfaces for AI-built interactive reports inside

🚀 RELEASES & LAUNCHES

• Slack introduces Surfaces for AI-built interactive reports inside chats
  Slack introduced Slackforce Surfaces for building interactive tools inside chats.

  • Available to all Slack customers, including free users with Slackbot enabled.
  • Users can describe reports, polls, dashboards, presentations, and microsites for Slackbot to build.
  • Slackbot can use permitted data from conversations and connected apps such as Google Drive and Salesforce.
  • Surfaces can be shared, pinned to channels, viewed, interacted with, and commented on; live data arrives in October.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: theverge.com · 👁 via The Verge AI

• NVIDIA releases SoL-Pi extension for more efficient Pi coding agents
  NVIDIA released SoL-Pi, an open-source extension that makes Pi coding agents more efficient.

  • SoL-Pi targets developers running long-lived Pi coding-agent tasks.
  • The extension adds four opt-in mechanisms for action fusion, observation packing, evidence-preserving log reduction, and online context compaction.
  • It runs on an unmodified Pi release and requires Node.js 22.19 or newer and Pi 0.84.2.
  • The project reports savings of $8.75–$13.50 per hour versus native Codex and Claude Code harnesses, and $4.36–$5.71 versus Pi.
  • SoL-Pi reduces repeated model turns, context replay, oversized observations, and long-log reading while retaining task evidence.
  Sources 📄 Source: github.com · 📎 Coverage: nvlabs.github.io · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA

🔬 RESEARCH

• Google Research introduces ToolGrad for efficient tool-use data generation
  Google Research introduced ToolGrad, an answer-first framework for generating tool-use training data.

  • For researchers and developers training tool-using LLMs and AI agents.
  • ToolGrad generates verified API workflows before writing matching user queries and responses.
  • Its proposer, executor, selector and updater modules iteratively build complex tool-use chains.
  • Google reports lower generation costs, higher pass rates and stronger results than baseline methods, including matching proprietary LLMs on unseen-tool datasets.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: research.google · 👁 via Google Research Blog

• Bartowski introduces per-tensor layout maps for GGUF quantization
  Bartowski introduced per-tensor layout maps to improve GGUF quantization efficiency.

  • The work targets local-model users and developers creating GGUF quantizations.
  • Bartowski evaluated more than 1,000 quantization configurations over roughly 96 hours across Qwen3.5 and other model families.
  • The resulting solver assigns tensor-specific quantization types using measured sensitivity, including depth and tensor-role differences.
  • Tests found token embeddings, attention projections, ffn_up, and ssm_out especially sensitive, while ffn_gate rarely justified extra bits.
  • The new layouts are reported to improve quality-per-bit over Bartowski’s previous model-agnostic heuristics.
  Sources 📄 Source: github.com · 📎 Coverage: huggingface.co · 👁 via r/LocalLLaMA

⚠️ INCIDENTS & SAFETY

• OpenAI pauses $200 Pro sign-ups as Astra demand strains capacity
  OpenAI paused new $200-per-month Pro subscriptions because Astra demand is straining its systems.
  • The change affects new subscribers to OpenAI’s $200-per-month Pro plan.
  • OpenAI said Pro subscriptions put the most strain on its infrastructure and disabled sign-ups temporarily.
  • Astra launched September 3 across Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business accounts.
  • OpenAI’s API, Go, and Plus plans remain available while the company adds capacity.
  Sources 📎 Coverage: techcrunch.com · 👁 via TechCrunch AI