Good Morning! Here's what's happening:
OpenAI upgraded GPT-5.5 Instant with better intent understanding, smarter handling of complex requests, and improved shopping and local recommendations
Notion launches External Agents, bringing Claude and Cursor onto your team's shared task board where you can @-mention them like any other teammate
Exa Connect launches, giving agents access to premium data beyond the public web including ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, and Similarweb
Plus: Gemini Deep Research, how to get a cited 10-page research report on any topic in under 15 minutes
4 new AI tools worth trying today
AI MODELS
OpenAI released a new version of GPT-5.5 Instant, upgrading its most-used model with better intent understanding, more reliable handling of complex constraints, and smarter shopping and local recommendations, rolling out to paid users now and free users today.
GPT-5.5 Instant now understands the intent behind a question and adapts its response accordingly, so you stop getting technically correct answers that miss what you actually meant.
It handles complex constraints more reliably, meaning when you give it multiple conditions or rules to follow at once, it keeps track of all of them instead of dropping some mid-response.
Shopping and local recommendations are noticeably more useful and cohesive, pulling together context and relevance in a way the previous version couldn't consistently do.
Rolling out to Pro and Plus users now, with free users getting access by the end of today.
GPT-5.5 Instant is OpenAI's most widely used model. A meaningful upgrade to the model most people interact with every day has more immediate reach than any new flagship release. Better intent understanding directly reduces the back-and-forth most people experience when ChatGPT gives an answer that's close but not quite right. And it's free.
AI AGENTS
Notion introduced External Agents, bringing Claude and Cursor into Notion as agents you can assign tasks to from a shared board, @-mention like teammates, and watch run alongside your team.
Claude and Cursor now appear on your Notion task board as external agents your whole team can see, assign work to, and track alongside human teammates without switching to a separate tool.
@-mention either agent in a task the same way you would mention a colleague. They pick up the assignment, run it, and the result stays connected to the work in Notion.
Claude agents handle data analysis, coding, spreadsheet building, and slide creation, and can chain into workflows where they hand tasks to each other automatically.
Cursor agents are purpose-built for product development work: fixing bugs, building features, and reviewing code, with every run staying visible and reviewable inside Notion.
Most teams plan in Notion but do the actual AI-assisted work somewhere else. External Agents closes that gap. You assign it in Notion, the agent runs it, and the output stays connected to the project. For teams already using Notion to manage work, this removes the step of jumping out to Claude or Cursor and bringing results back manually.
AI TOOLS
Exa launched Exa Connect, a new product that gives AI agents access to premium data sources beyond the public web, starting with ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, Similarweb, and other leading data providers.
Exa Connect gives agents access to company intelligence, funding data, web traffic analytics, and other premium datasets that aren't available through standard web search or public sources.
It works with any agent or workflow, so you don't need to rebuild anything to start pulling premium data into existing pipelines.
One connection to Exa Connect gives your agent access to multiple premium providers at once, instead of setting up and managing separate integrations for each data source.
Available now at exa.ai/connect for anyone building or running agents that need data beyond what the public web offers.
Agents are only as good as the data they can reach. The public web covers a lot but leaves out the company intelligence, funding history, and traffic analytics that serious research and sales work require. Exa Connect closes that gap in one connection. For anyone using agents for market research, competitive analysis, or lead intelligence, this changes what a single agent run can actually produce.
PREMIUM GUIDE
Gemini Deep Research: The Full Guide.
How to get a cited 10-page research report on any topic in under 15 minutes.
Every week I need to understand something new well enough to teach it.
A new AI model drops. A new research paper gets attention. A concept my students keep asking about that I want to explain precisely, not approximately. In most cases I have two hours and a newsletter deadline.
My old workflow: open 15 tabs, skim everything, take notes, try to synthesize it into something coherent. The output was fine. The process was exhausting.
Deep Research changed that. I write one query. I spend two minutes editing the research plan. I walk Alfie. I come back to a 10-page cited report that covers the topic better than my 15-tab approach did.
What Deep Research actually is.
Regular Gemini answers from memory with a light web grounding pass. You get a confident paragraph. You have no idea which sources it drew from.
Deep Research is different. It builds a research plan first, then browses dozens of sources autonomously, following links and gathering evidence the way an actual researcher would. A full research run takes between 5 and 30 minutes depending on the scope.
The output is a structured, cited report. Every claim links back to a source. You can click any citation and verify exactly where it came from.
The key distinction: this isn't a chatbot you query. It's an agent you brief.
Ask regular Gemini "what is retrieval-augmented generation?" and you get a definition. Ask Deep Research the same question and you get a structured breakdown of how it works, the leading implementations, the trade-offs between approaches, the current limitations, and the research directions people are actively exploring, all cited.
How to access it.
Go to gemini.google.com. Click the + button in the compose bar. Select Deep Research.
The free tier includes a monthly quota of Deep Research reports, enough to test the tool properly before committing to a paid plan.
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Figma launched Figma Motion at Config 2026. Motion is now live inside Figma for creating animations directly in the design tool, no separate animation software required.
Genspark introduced Genspark Design, a Claude Opus 4.7 powered design tool that takes a rough idea and produces production-ready UI prototypes, videos, HTML animations, and posters. Upload your Figma files to stay on brand and turn any design into working code in one click.
Perplexity launched Computer for Counsel, connecting Perplexity Computer to the legal databases, document tools, and matter management systems lawyers use every day, including LegalZoom, Docusign, and NetDocuments, with citable sources pulled directly into research.
ā” ChatGPT: GPT-5.5 Instant just got smarter. Better intent understanding, more reliable with complex requests, and improved shopping and local recommendations, free for everyone today.
š§ Notion: Claude and Cursor now join your Notion task board as external agents. @-mention them, assign tasks, and they run alongside your team inside the same workspace.
š Exa: Exa Connect gives agents access to premium data beyond the public web. ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, Similarweb, and more in one connection.
š¬ Runway: New ad localization feature lets you input one image and get a version for every market in any language, all in a single click.
THATāS IT FOR TODAY
Thanks for making it to the end! I put my heart into every email I send, I hope you are enjoying it. Let me know your thoughts so I can make the next one even better!
See you tomorrow :)
- Dr. Alvaro Cintas