boorang

I did the same in about the same timeframe. I created a nice little hierarchy of "when writing tests, read docs/test-patterns.md" type logic. The idea was to put all of my personal heuristics about coding in a "lazy loaded" documentation directory. I'm able to generate Java code that is nearly the same as what I would generate if I was coding it myself. I haven't deleted my documentation or anything. I see people making this claim, did you literally delete your coding documentation or something?

It seems like, for example, some people like to use var and some people like to use the full type name in Java declarations. The LLM can't know your preference upfront, you need to tell it. When people talk about shitty vibe-code I assume it's because they didn't do these steps.

I could see (but wouldn't count on it) the argument that the current models are so good at recognizing patterns in the code that in a mature well-organized codebase they don't need to be told what the patterns are, but I haven't bothered with those experiments yet. If it ain't broke don't fix it was my thinking.

I didn't think it was that controversial actually. I don't bother navigating man pages or help FAQs anymore, i just ask the agent how do i do X step by step. Opening this up as part of the app to regular non-engineering users seems relatively easy to implement, but since it would have app permissions you would skip the "give me the steps" and just say do it.

My hypothesis is that the help/support buttons in nearly all apps will be to an agent in the future. Like now you would type "how do i do X" in the excel search bar, in the future it will be "do x". Users in 10 years may not even know how to use the menu/mouse functionality for apps.

I tried both --system-prompt and --system-prompt-file. they both appended when i tried about 6 months ago and watched the traffic. Yes I cleanup all those tools etc.

FYI you can modify the system prompt using mitmproxy. Just ask your agent to walk you through it. Anthropic system prompts are gnarly and geared towards the lowest common denominator.

this ticks at something that maybe is obvious in retrospect- this is all about economics. the arguments about "using AI doesn't make you an artist", etc. are about being able to charge money for your art i think. maybe obvious to some, but it needs to be explicitly spelled out i think. i was stuck on "i dunno, if i use an AI assistant to run blender i'm still being creative", but is the real argument "you should not be able to charge money to use blender with an AI assistant- you are displacing existing blender artists economically"?

i'm in semi-forced-retirement as an older software engineer in this labor market, so i might be less sensitive to the implicit economic arguments.

i disable subagents. it also helps that i work in microservice size repos, so a single agent can keep the full relevant context. subagents waste alot of unnecessary tokens doing code exploration that the main agent is going to end up duplicating, i think they make more sense for monorepos.

anecdotally I've tried the same plan on different branches with both approaches (single agent with subagents implement the full plan vs. my little session per phase app) and then had agents judge the code quality and my approach worked better and saves tokens. horses for courses.

I appreciate you directly addressing what I was talking about. In my case, I'm an old school 90s wannabe rapper/producer and I used to make beats with old school drum machines, a sequential prophet 2000 sampler, and my friends MPC3000 sampler when I could get my hands on it. When music went into the full computer/MIDI programming phase I dropped out as I lost interest in it, for many of the same reasons that artists today will be facing with AI.

Having never learned the computer tools, like Logic Pro, or whatever open source alternatives are available, I've been considering taking a crack back at it. I have no desire to learn these tools, but if I can say "ok move the kick 1/8 and double up the snare on measure 4" I may get back in the swing of things.

Forced retirement at 50 has me looking for new hobbies.

I'm not really worried about what anyone wants to call me, but I was just pointing out a legitimate use case for agentic AI in the arts.

I've been on this kick since I realized the primacy of the initial part of the session context. I created a python app that reads a phased plan and kicks off a new session for each phase. There is a standard prompt and handoff mechanism to determine if we encountered any unforeseen issues that we need to address in chat, but otherwise it will just grind with a clean session with appropriate context for each phase.

I mean i suppose it depends on if you think people using blender are artists. If you think the part that makes them creative is knowing to right click select blah do blah then I get your position. If you say "no, make the background fade out at this point, push the face to the foreground, and add some shadow behind", I really don't understand why knowing the specific keystrokes are the creative part.

But I think you know that and you're just straw manning.

edit- to be clear i'm talking about using existing software like logic pro, blender, etc. i'm not talking about generative AI.

you don't need to learn blender anymore. you can talk with the ai and describe what you want and iterate. all of the software tools used in media are now accessible to creative but not necessarily technical people.

I am curious if we will reach a point where people who are skilled at context engineering/architecture eventually are hired to do jobs completely out of their fields. I think the best pairing would be domain experts + software architects teaming up on AI work in their respective domains.