ChabadLabs AI FOR SHLICHUS
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Issue № 14 · The Weekly

Chabad Labs Weekly.

Claude Opus 5.5 Is Here

Issue № 14 Date Sep 23, 2026 Read 5 min
01 / Fresh from the Lab ▚

Get Ready for the Chabad Labs AI Promptathon!

A shliach and a small robot welcome people at the open doors of a Chabad House under a banner reading Chutzah, as water pours down the steps carrying a music note, a scroll, a phone app, a book and a video button to young men picking them up on the sidewalk.

Who can make the best AI output? It can be in any format: a song, an article, an app, anything in between. The theme is Chutzah: using AI to make Chassidus accessible to a wider audience.

Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs as a novel? Niggunim in K-Pop style? Lulav challenge social media posts? The AI's the limit!

Use our Shluchim Exchange MCP, use resources people have posted in the AI for Shlichus group, use anything and everything, and use your own creativity (or brainstorm with the AI!).

There are over $2,000 in prizes, and the final is at the Kinus Hashluchim. The judges (a panel, TBD) pick the finalists from every entry, and they pick the winners. A weekly vote counts for the entries that had one, and people's choice follows the votes. Entries close Sunday, November 1, 11:59 pm New York time (22 Cheshvan). Updated September 25: entries now close November 1.

Will you be the one to create Rashi and Tosfos on the Rebbe's sichos, or a podcast about Torah and Science?

02 / Dvar Malchus ▚

Dvar Malchus

איתא בזהר : ובשית מאה שנין לשתיתאה יתפתחון תרעי דחכמתא לעילא ומבועי דחכמתא לתתא וכו׳ וסימנך בשנת שש מאות שנה לחיי נח וגו׳ נבקעו כל מעינות תהום רבה״. וכוונת הזוה״ק בפשטות היא, כי בזמן ההוא יפתחו שערי החכמות בכלל ושערי חכמת התורה בעיקר ובפרט. וכן ראינו זכינו באותם הימים באותו הזמן בנוגע לחכמות בכלל. ובחכמת התורה לגילוי׳ של פנימיות התורה - חלק התורה שהי׳ כמוס וסתום עד אז,

לקוטי שיחות חלק ז, ע׳ 206

03 / Top AI News & Trends ▚

Claude Opus 5.5 Is Here

A shliach at his desk turns in surprise as a small robot waves from an open delivery box, its old scuffed chest plate lying on the floor, while a second robot peeks in from the doorway.

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on Tuesday. Anthropic says it does most work as well as Fable 5.1, its top model, and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5.

OpenAI answered the same day with two new models, GPT-6 Sol and Luna.

04 / Top AI News & Trends ▚

Claude Raised Its Limits and Gave You a Reset

A tired shliach at his laptop, its screen showing an empty fuel gauge, as a small robot walks up carrying a red jerrycan labeled Reset, with October 22 circled on the calendar behind them.

Along with Opus 5.5, Anthropic increased Claude's five-hour usage limits.

It also handed out a free one-time reset. If you hit your limit in the middle of something, you can reset your usage back to full instead of waiting.

Go to Settings → Usage → Reset for free. The same button appears when you hit a limit. The current reset expires October 22.

Our take. We've been enjoying the ability to reset our usage in ChatGPT for a while, and we're happy to see the same idea come to Claude. Hopefully it becomes a regular feature, not a one-off.

05 / Top AI News & Trends ▚

An AI That Judges Instead of Writes

A small robot in a judge's robe holds up a 92% scorecard between doors marked Yes and No as a shliach hands it an envelope, while a second robot holding a long scroll scratches its head.

Most of the AI tools we use, like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, are language models. You ask a question and they generate an answer.

Jev, from a new company called TypeSafe AI, is built for a narrower job: choosing between defined options.

Give it a message and a fixed list of possible answers, like urgent / can wait, RSVP / donation question, or yes / no, and it decides which one fits and tells you how confident it is.

It can still make the wrong decision. But it can't suddenly invent another option that wasn't on your list.

TypeSafe says Jev was up to 194 times faster and far cheaper than regular LLMs in its own tests. People are calling it a new class of "judgment models."

It's for developers building apps, so there's nothing for most of us to install yet.

Our take. Machine learning is much bigger than language models.

LLMs are incredibly useful, but not every AI job needs an LLM. Our bet is that companies will increasingly mix and match different kinds of models: one might decide where a message should go, another might check something, and an LLM might handle the conversation.

That could make AI systems faster, cheaper and more reliable.

The future of AI isn't only larger language models.

06 / Top AI News & Trends ▚

Wishing AI Could Take Calls Like Your Secretary?

A small robot with a headset answers the phone and takes notes at a front desk while a shliach heads out the door with his bag, waving goodbye.

ElevenLabs, the AI voice company, launched Reception last week. It's an AI receptionist that answers your phone in more than 70 languages, takes messages and books appointments.

Until now, an AI that talks on the phone was something a developer had to build for you. Reception you can set up yourself.

Think of it as a 24/6 receptionist for your Chabad House: the office line at night, or while you're out on mivtzoim.

Before you point your real number at it, call it yourself a few times. Ask about service times. Ask something it doesn't know. Ask it a halachic question. See where it answers well and where it needs to stop and take a message for a human.

See Reception →
07 / One Thing to Try ▚

Make Sukkos More Fun With AI

In a sukkah lit with string lights, a small robot plays a ukulele while three boys color pictures of a lulav, esrog and sukkah and a shliach holds up a trivia game on his phone, an Ushpizin poster on the wall.

You can make really cool things with AI: a song, a poster, a short video, a game, even a small app. This Sukkos, the only limit is how creative you get.

A few ideas to get you going:

Then show us what you made in the AI for Shlichus WhatsApp group. For Shluchos, share it in the Shluchos AI group.

Not sure where to start? Paste this 
I want to make Sukkos more fun for [my family / our Chabad House]. Give me ten creative things I could make with AI in under 30 minutes each. They can be songs, images, videos, printable games or a small app. They should either be prepared before Yom Tov or used on Chol Hamoed. For each one, tell me which free or free-tier tool to use and write the first prompt for me.
Share it in the group →
08 / Coming Up ▚

Register for the AI Track at the Kinus Hashluchim

A small robot on a stepladder hangs a banner reading AI Track over the doors of a convention hall while a shliach steadies the ladder and shluchim walk in behind them.

Registration for the Kinus workshops is open. Sign up for the AI track sessions.

Register for workshops →