AI NEWS: Stripe's Minions, Distillation Attacks on Claude, Cloudflare's Code Mode

Shane and Abhi break down the biggest AI news from the past few days. 

Anthropic identified industrial-scale distillation attacks on Claude by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax. Anthropic also released a groundbreaking report analyzing millions of AI agent interactions using Claude. Software engineering makes up ~50% of all agentic tool calls, but there's emerging use across back office automation, marketing, finance, and more. Claude Code Security launched in a limited research preview.

Stripe is shipping 1,300+ AI-generated PRs per week. And they're made by... Minions?

Code Mode for MCP is becoming a standard part of the MCP ecosystem. Amp claims the coding agent is dead. We also cover skills benchmarks (smaller models with high-quality skills beat raw Opus), trajectory explorer for agent traces, Vercel AI Gateway video support, Taalas custom silicon for AI inference, Google's Pomelli Photoshoot feature, and the GitHub Star Party pick: superpowers framework.

🔗 RESOURCES
Anthropic's distillation attack report: https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/2025997928242811253
Anthropic's agent analysis: https://x.com/anthropicai/status/2024210053369385192
Claude Code Security: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2024907535145468326
Prompt auto-caching: https://x.com/RLanceMartin/status/2024573404888911886
Stripe minions Part 2: https://stripe.dev/blog/minions-stripes-one-shot-end-to-end-coding-agents-part-2
Code Mode for MCP: https://blog.cloudflare.com/code-mode-mcp/
Amp's statement: https://ampcode.com/news/the-coding-agent-is-dead
Skills benchmark: https://x.com/forloopcodes/status/2024819596809949341
Trajectory Explorer: https://x.com/benhylak/status/2024546696211083653
Vercel AI Gateway: https://x.com/rauchg/status/2024629864951927222
Taalas: https://x.com/taalas_inc/status/2024516399251456150
Google Pomelli Photoshoot: https://x.com/GoogleLabs/status/2024529795548102667
Superpowers: https://x.com/socialwithaayan/status/2025609619167670501

AI Agents Hour is a weekly livestream hosted by Mastra CPO Shane Thomas and CTO Abhi Aiyer. Airing Mondays at 12PM Pacific on YouTube and X, the show covers breaking AI news, agent development techniques, and features interviews with industry experts building AI applications today.

📚 MASTRA RESOURCES
Mastra: https://mastra.ai
Learn Mastra in the world's first MCP-Based Course: https://mastra.ai/course
Principles of Building AI Agents (Book): https://mastra.ai/book
Patterns for Building AI Agents (New Book): https://mastra.ai/blog/patterns-book https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduJjc515f6RZJqtkR2ByqJZrB0iP8B7SUKnjjZE9IajH_I8w/viewform

MASTRA?
Mastra is an open-source TypeScript framework designed for building and shipping AI-powered applications and agents with minimal friction. It supports the full lifecycle of agent development—from prototype to production. You can integrate it with frontend and backend stacks (e.g., React, Next.js, Node) or run agents as standalone services. If you’re a JavaScript or TypeScript developer looking to build an agentic or AI-powered product without starting from first principles, Mastra provides the scaffolding, tools, and integrations to accelerate that process.

CHAPTERS
00:00 – Intro
00:25 – Anthropic: Distillation Attacks by DeepSeek, Moonshot, MiniMax
01:36 – Anthropic's Agent Report: 50% Software Engineering, Other Domains Emerging
02:47 – Claude Code Security in Research Preview
03:34 – Prompt Auto-Caching with Claude
03:53 – Stripe Minions: 1,300 PRs/Week
05:39 – Code Mode for MCP (99.9% Token Reduction)
07:29 – Amp: "The Coding Agent Is Dead"
08:36 – Skills Beat Size: Smaller Models with High-Quality Skills
09:39 – Quick Hits: Trajectory Explorer, Vercel AI Gateway, Taalas, Google Photoshoot
12:00 – GitHub Star Party: Superpowers Framework