AI product notes: week of 3 August 2026

Smaller product updates do not always need a full article, but they can still matter if you own the platform, run the admin console, or build against the API.

Updates

• OpenAI: ChatGPT auto-converts large pastes over 10k characters into attachments to protect context windows (9 August 2026). Anyone who regularly pastes long code blocks, documents, or logs into ChatGPT will now find them automatically tucked into an attachment, protecting your context budget, with a one-click option to expand back to inline text if needed.

• Microsoft: Copilot in SharePoint can now turn lists, Excel, and CSV files into live interactive dashboards (9 August 2026). Teams that previously had to export SharePoint list data and rebuild dashboards every time something changed can now generate live, auto-refreshing reports in a single Copilot prompt, cutting a common weekly data-wrangling chore entirely.

• Anthropic: Claude Code update: gateway spend-limit warnings, workspace trust prompts for agents, OAuth fixes (8 August 2026). Teams running Claude Code behind an operator gateway now get clear, actionable spend-limit messages instead of generic errors; the workspace trust prompt closes a gap that let untrusted directories run agents without a confirmation step.

• Google: Gemini Enterprise data agents now return charts and visualisations inline from Looker (8 August 2026). Business users querying Looker-backed agents in Gemini Enterprise no longer need to context-switch to a dashboard to see data visually, charts now appear directly in the conversation alongside the answer.

• Google: Gemini Enterprise data connector tracing extended end-to-end with two new trace spans (8 August 2026). Teams building Gemini Enterprise agents that pull from external data sources can now trace exactly where latency or errors occur across the full connector call chain, rather than just within the model response.

• Anthropic: Claude Code v2.1.224: subagent spawn cap removed, cross-session messaging, archive plugin installs, and 13 bug fixes (7 August 2026). Removing the subagent spawn cap and adding cross-session messaging opens the door to much larger multi-agent Claude Code pipelines, while archive plugin installs let air-gapped teams deliver plugins without npm or git access.

• Microsoft: Copilot ‘Wrap Up Your Day’ arrives in New Outlook for Windows and Android (7 August 2026). Copilot now surfaces a daily email digest and next-day action plan directly inside the Outlook inbox on Windows and Android, giving M365 Copilot subscribers an end-of-day productivity nudge without having to open a separate app or prompt.

• Microsoft: Copilot in SharePoint can now generate live list-connected dashboards from a natural language prompt (7 August 2026). Teams can now produce self-refreshing SharePoint dashboards with a single Copilot prompt instead of manually exporting data and rebuilding reports every time a list changes.

• Google: Gemini in Classroom expands to students of all ages from 10 August 2026 (7 August 2026). School IT admins who enabled Gemini for staff or older students should check their policies before 10 August, Gemini features will automatically become available to younger K-12 students if admin-level Gemini access is already switched on for the domain.

• Microsoft: Microsoft 365 Copilot July 2026 roundup: GPT-5.6 in M365, @mention Office agents in Copilot Chat, and Notebooks markdown support (7 August 2026). GPT-5.6 is now the engine behind everyday M365 Copilot tasks, @mention agent access removes the need to switch apps for document creation, and Markdown reference support in Notebooks is useful for dev-team documentation workflows.

• Anthropic: Claude API adds expiry dates for API keys in the Console (6 August 2026). Expiring API keys are a basic credential-hygiene requirement for most enterprise security policies; this feature lets teams enforce automatic key rotation from the Console without needing external secrets-management tooling for the basic rotation workflow.

• Anthropic: Claude Managed Agents gains effort-level configuration and expanded webhook coverage for environment and memory store events (6 August 2026). Setting effort levels per agent lets you tune cost and latency for different workloads without changing application code, while the expanded webhooks mean you can now trigger downstream systems on any agent environment or memory store state change.

• Google: Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 Preview deprecated with August 31, 2026 shutdown (6 August 2026). Any application calling gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview will break on August 31, developers have under four weeks to migrate to a supported robotics model endpoint before calls start failing.

• Anthropic: Claude Code adds /code-review alias, smarter auto-compact for unknown models, and cross-session subagent fixes (6 August 2026). The /code-review alias and effort-level options make PR review in Claude Code more flexible, while the auto-compact and status-display fixes reduce confusing behaviour in long-running agent sessions.

• Google: Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 preview model deprecated: hard shutdown 31 August 2026 (5 August 2026). Any application or research pipeline using the gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview model ID on the Gemini API will stop working on 31 August 2026, developers need to identify a replacement before the deadline.

• OpenAI: ChatGPT adds Sign in with ChatGPT beta for Airtable, GitLab, HubSpot, Notion, Supabase, and Vercel (4 August 2026). Sign in with ChatGPT reduces the friction of connecting external apps to ChatGPT and Codex workflows, particularly useful for teams that use Notion or GitLab as part of their agent pipelines.

• OpenAI: ChatGPT custom instructions character limit rises to 5,000 for paid plans (4 August 2026). Paid ChatGPT users can now write far more detailed system-level instructions, useful for teams that maintain a shared persona, formatting rules, or domain-specific context across all conversations.

• Anthropic: Claude Code gets a VSCode Focus view, sandbox credential masking, and a batch of MCP and permission fixes (4 August 2026). The new VSCode Focus view cleans up the IDE experience for Claude Code users, while the credential-masking fix closes a potential secret-leakage path in sandboxed agent runs, both are worth applying on next upgrade.

• Anthropic: Claude’s multi-language SDKs now support persistent REPL state in code execution (3 August 2026). Agentic workflows that call the code execution tool can now share state across multiple sequential tool calls within a session, enabling multi-step data analysis and iterative coding tasks without rerunning setup code each time.

• Google: Gemini API deprecates gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview, shutting down August 31 (3 August 2026). Robotics developers calling the ER-1.6 preview endpoint have less than four weeks to migrate to ER-2-preview before requests start returning errors.

• Google: Gemini API deprecates temperature, top_p, and top_k sampling parameters (3 August 2026). Any Gemini API integration that explicitly sets temperature, top_p, or top_k will need to be updated, these parameters are now deprecated and their removal will break requests that rely on them.

• Google: Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 Preview model deprecated: shutdown August 31 (3 August 2026). Teams using the Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 Preview API endpoint have until August 31 to migrate to a supported robotics model, check your integration now if you are running any robotics or embodied AI pipelines on this model.

• OpenAI: OpenAI announces DevDay 2026 for September 29 in San Francisco (3 August 2026). OpenAI’s biggest annual developer event is confirmed for September 29 in San Francisco, save the date if you are building on the OpenAI API, as DevDay is typically where major API and platform announcements land.

• OpenAI: OpenAI deprecates legacy audio, realtime, and transcription model families: removal January 20, 2027 (3 August 2026). Voice and transcription pipelines using older model snapshot IDs have until January 20, 2027 to migrate, start an audit of pinned audio model IDs now before the sprint is forgotten.