It's Wednesday, July 22nd. Anthropic just made teaching Claude as easy as recording your screen and talking through the task, no code required. Google shipped Gemini 3.6 Flash plus a cybersecurity model locked behind a government-and-partner pilot. Two different bets on who gets to teach the machine.
In Today’s Top Tools, we spotlight some of the most innovative, creative AI apps that we recommend adding to your stack.
TOOL SPOTLIGHT
🎥 Claude Cowork Turns Your Screen Recording Into A Skill
Image from Claude
Anthropic quietly shipped Record a Skill inside Claude Cowork this week, built on the same Agent Skills framework developers already use, but with zero setup: you just do the job once.
Open the + menu in Claude desktop, pick Record a Skill, and start screen-recording the task while narrating your reasoning out loud.
Let Claude turn the recording into a structured Skill it can re-run on future requests, no SKILL.md file to write by hand.
Share the resulting skill across a Team workspace so a teammate can trigger the same workflow without ever watching the original recording.
Live now on Pro, Max, and Team plans inside the Claude desktop app; Free tier isn't included.
Until this week, making a reusable Skill meant writing a SKILL.md file by hand, which kept agent-building with the engineers. Now the person who actually does the task can teach Claude the job, so the workflow keeps their fingerprints on it instead of getting handed off. The catch: Claude only learns what you show it. A sloppy demo makes a sloppy Skill.
TOOL SPOTLIGHT
⚡ Google Ships Three New Gemini Flash Models, One Locked Down
Image from Google
Google announced the Gemini 3.6 Flash family on July 21, cutting output tokens 17% versus 3.5 Flash while lifting coding and computer-use scores across the board, at $1.50 per million input tokens.
Call Gemini 3.6 Flash from the API today for $1.50/M input and $7.50/M output tokens, a 17% token-usage cut versus 3.5 Flash.
Run 3.5 Flash-Lite for high-throughput jobs at 350 tokens per second, priced at $0.30/M input and $2.50/M output.
Apply for pilot access to 3.5 Flash Cyber if you work in government or a trusted-partner security program; it patches vulnerabilities through Google's CodeMender pipeline.
3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite are live now via the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini app; Flash Cyber stays behind a pilot gate.
Skip the cyber model, it's not the news. The news is $1.50 per million input tokens for a model that codes better than the last one on 17% fewer output tokens. Build agents and that efficiency is what hits your bill, not the sticker price. Google is racing to the bottom on cost for the exact workloads OpenAI and Anthropic are betting on. That's the story worth watching.
AI SUMMIT AT STANFORD
🌲 The AI Summit @ Stanford: Claim Your 10% Discount as an AIC Member
We're thrilled to share that The AI Collective is a proud community partner of the AI Summit at Stanford, and honestly, this is the event to be at this summer.
Happening July 30 to August 1, this pioneering residential AI summit brings together the leading founders, investors, technologists, and researchers shaping the future of AI, all on Stanford's campus, for three unforgettable days.
The speaker lineup currently includes:
Stanford President Jonathan Levin
Former Stanford President and Alphabet Chairman John Hennessy
Alfred Lin, Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital
Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of xAI
Arvind KC, Chief People Officer at OpenAI
Ilya Strebulaev, Professor of Finance at Stanford GSB
David Hefter, AI Investments at BlackRock
Aditya Naganath, Partner at Kleiner Perkins
Alex Morgan, Partner at Khosla Ventures
And that's just the start. This won’t be a hotel-ballroom conference; it's three days of living on Stanford’s campus alongside the people building and funding what comes next.
As part of our community, you get 10% off tickets with code AICOLLECTIVE. Spots are limited, and this one will sell out. Don't miss it.
In this section, we feature a few standout opportunities leading AI companies, non-profits, policy groups, and other organizations.
🔬 Work at a Lab/AI Safety
Roles at frontier labs, safety organizations, and research institutions
RESEARCH SCIENTIST, LIFE SCIENCES — Anthropic | San Francisco, CA | $300,000–$320,000
RESEARCH ENGINEER/RESEARCH SCIENTIST, PRE-TRAINING — Anthropic | SF / Seattle / NYC | $350,000–$850,000
RESEARCH ENGINEER, ECONOMIC RESEARCH DATA PLATFORM — Anthropic | San Francisco, CA | $320,000–$405,000
RESEARCH ENGINEER — FAR.AI | Berkeley (Remote US/Intl option) | $100,000–$190,000
🚀 Work in Industry
Roles at funded AI startups and private companies
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, MACHINE LEARNING — Figma | SF, NY, or remote US | $153,000–$376,000
AI APPLIED SCIENTIST — Figma | SF, NY, or remote US | $153,000–$376,000
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AI SDK — Vercel | Hybrid, San Francisco / NYC | $196,000–$294,000
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AGENT — Vercel | Hybrid, San Francisco | $232,000–$348,000
FOUNDING AI ENGINEER — Weave (YC W25) | San Francisco, CA | $150,000–$200,000 + 0.10%–0.20% equity
🏛️ Work in AI Policy / Governance
Roles in government, think tanks, NGOs, and policy organizations
DIRECTOR, AI POLICY — Federation of American Scientists | Washington, DC | $175,000–$215,000
FEDERAL POLICY MANAGER — The Alliance for Secure AI | Washington, DC | $120,000–$150,000
POLICY ADVISOR — ControlAI | Washington, DC | $90,000–$160,000
RESEARCH FELLOW — GovAI | Washington, DC or London, UK | $134,500–$170,000 (DC) / £84,000–£103,500 (London)
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🧑💻 About the Editors
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI and the workforce. His work and body of research explores the economics of emerging technology and organizational strategy. Outside of AIC, Noah heads research for Centaurian AI.
About Joy Dong
Joy is a news editor, writer, and entrepreneur at the intersection of AI and blockchain. Whether she is demystifying complex systems in her newsletter, TEA, or building streamlined solutions through her automation agency, Ownly, Joy’s mission is to make emerging tech accessible and actionable for everyone.
About Lindsay Gross
Lindsay is an AI engineer, researcher, and writer focused on how AI systems behave in practice and what it takes to make them safe. Her work sits at the intersection of AI safety, governance, and product design, and at AIC she writes about the questions that matter most as these systems scale.