pscanf

Joined 12 years ago

Karma
285
Submissions
109
Member since
May 14
My software-related posts: https://pscanf.com/s/
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Recent submissions

Comment · 3 days ago
I have so many use cases for this. I just hope that we'll get a standard like https://www.openresponses.org/, because the idea of coupling an app to a particular vendor doesn't seem appealing at all, especially since it seems that the functionalities they offer are more or less the same. (I'm thinking about the OpenAI's Agent API and Anthropic's Agent SDK as "alternatives.)
Comment · 4 days ago
It's open source, so yes, though there is no "easy setup" like a Docker image or a Cloudflare template yet.

The artifacts are only kept in your local indexeddb though, so they don't get uploaded. Or well, unless you start a collaboration session, but even then they are encrypted before uploading, and the key stays in your browser (in the url hash), so I can't see any data on my end.

But I definitely understand the concern. Would you prefer it in a Docker image? Or maybe wrapped in an Electron app?

Comment · 4 days ago
Thanks! I did indeed write it with AI¹. It actually evolved from the approach I was using beforehand: asking every time my coding agent to break down the PR into steps and build an interface for me to go through them (because GitHub PR UI is effectively unusable for me). I got tired of burning tokens building the ~same UI over and over, so I thought "why not define a format for the review and build a decent UI just once?".

¹ Though actually the "harness of guidelines" I've been using recently make Claude not produce _complete_ garbage.

Comment · 2 months ago
I can see how for a local this system might be better, but as a tourist I strongly prefer the tap in/tap out system, especially if I can just use my credit card.

I used the SBB app a few times, and it's actually very good, but it's still an "app experience". First, I need to set it up (download, login, add payment method), for which I need an internet connection (which I might not have as soon as I enter the country). Then, every time I need to purchase a ticket I need to open the app and figure out how to do what I need to.

Tapping in and out is superior in my view, even though I might end up overpaying a bit (though I'm probably still paying much less than what I'd pay in Switzerland :D ).

Comment · 5 months ago
Author here. I definitely agree that communicating well is a prerequisite to getting decent results. On the other hand:

1. Even if you communicate perfectly, there's no guarantee that the LLM will "behave as instructed" and as you imagined it to. Indeed, the frustration often comes from the fact that you've said something as clear as day, yet the agent takes another path.

2. Part of the value of coding agents is exactly that you don't need to lay it all out perfectly for them. I mean, if I need to give the LLM every little implementation detail, I might as well write the code. Of course, I don't expect it to work off of "I want nice app make money", but I do expect some "intelligence" in figuring out the missing pieces.

Comment · 5 months ago
> Every sentence says something. Every sentence is important and holds its weight. [...] Also, it makes the post harder (and more boring) to read.

I actually prefer that style of writing! (When it's not AI-generated ofc.) And I also try to use it in my technical blog posts. I usually re-read my drafts asking myself: "Does the reader actually care about this? Is this sentence adding something or is it just fluff?"

And actually I feel like AI text usually produces more fluff, or anyway I notice it more, but I see how it can make the result "robotic and boring".

Comment · 5 months ago
Comment · 6 months ago
Comment · 6 months ago
I just finished¹ building an experimental tool that tries to figure out if a repo is slopware or not just by looking at it's git history (plus some GitHub activity data).

The takeaway from my experiment is that you can really tell a lot by how / when / what people commit, but conclusions are very hard to generalize.

For example, I've also stumbled upon the "merge vs squash" issue, where squashes compress and mostly hide big chunks of history, so drawing conclusions from a squashed commit is basically just wild guessing.

(The author of course has also flagged this. But I just wanted to add my voice: yeah, careful to generalize.)

¹ Nothing is ever finished.

Comment · 7 months ago
Yeah, maybe it's that, though I still wouldn't expect someone to categorize the post as blogspam, even if they just glance at it. (At least according to my definition of blogspam, but I guess each has their own.) But yes, pragmatically I should probably remove the disclaimer.
Comment · 7 months ago
I gave up on r/programming after an article I wrote (thoughtfully, without AI, even though the content might not have been super interesting) got mod-slapped with a stickied comment "This content is low quality, stolen, blogspam, or clearly AI generated".

Ironically, that comment was added three months after I posted the article, when it was nowhere near the front page anymore, in a clearly automated and AI-driven review.

Still salty about it.

Comment · 7 months ago
Oh, interesting, I didn't know about this project, thanks for sharing!

I tried to implement something like this for the search functionality, but ended up going with "old school" lexical search instead.

Mostly because, in my experimentation, vector search didn't perform significantly better, and in some case it performed worse. All the while being much more expensive on several fronts: indexing time (which also requires either an API or a ~big local model), storage, search time, and implementation complexity.

And Superego's agent actually does quite well with the lexical search tool. The model usually tries a few different queries in parallel, which approximates a bit semantic search.

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