tgittos

You should, it’s fun.

I have a devcontainer running the Cosmopolitan toolchain and stuck the cosmocc README.md in a file referenced from my AGENTS.md.

Claude does a decent job. You have to stay on top of it when it’s writing C, easy to turn to spaghetti.

Also the fat binary concept trips up agents - just have it read the actual cosmocc file itself to figure any issues out.

This is something that you can bootstrap into a proof-of-concept in a day and learn the tools you like and don't like along the way.

Basically you'll use any LLM and a vector DB of your choice (I like ChromaDB to date). Write a tool that will walk your source documents and chunk them. Submit the chunks to your LLM with a prompt that asks the LLM to come up with search retrieval questions for the chunk. Store the document and the questions in ChromaDB, cross-referencing the question to the document source (you can add the filename/path as metadata to the question) and the relevant chunk (by it's ID).

Run this tool whenever your docs change - you can automate this. Being intelligent about detecting new/changed content and how you chunk/generate questions can save you time and money and be a place to optimize.

To use it, you need to accept user input, run the input as a text query against your vector DB and submit both the results (with filenames and relevant chunks) and the user's query to a LLM with a prompt designed to elicit a certain kind of response based on input and the relevant chunks. Show the response to the user. Loop if you want.

You can build most of this with as few tools as `litellm`, `langchain` and `huggingface` libraries. You'll be surprised how far you can get with such a dumb setup.

Yes, this is basic RAG. That's how you do it without getting overwhelmed with all the tooling/libraries out there.

Wild. I also grew up in Perth and until just now thought WA didn't have trapdoor spiders. Thanks for the anecdote that taught me something.

I moved out of Australia and let my bank know that I would likely be using credit cards overseas for a while.

Sure enough, as I was trying to buy furniture for my new place, the same thing happened to me. They blocked the card and when I called them they scolded me for not letting them know that I was traveling. I told the agent that I did in fact let them know, and asked them to update the account to note that I lived overseas.

Some 5 years later I needed to use one of those accounts again. I diligently phoned the bank, let them know I lived overseas and that I was going to use the card. I used the card, the transaction was blocked, I called and was again scolded for not telling them that I went on holiday.

I swear the 'notes' they add to your account are just an eye-roll and then a call disconnect.

I started building a Magic based data science tool for 6 months before coming to the same inevitable conclusion. It sits in a Github private repo rotting away.

That will depend on things you won't know until you start.

How much do you start with, what's your burn rate, how long until you get revenue, are you bootstrapping/funding, your personal cost of living, etc.

Running a business involves risk. Risk to your comfort, your mental health, physical health, financial health, etc. Closing a business is the end of all of that, not the start.

Why do you want to scratch that entrepreneurial itch?

> If I was thinking about driving through the Amazon I would ask others what the experience was like to better understand the risks, not just hop in the car and hope for the best.

Not what you are doing.

If you were probing to discover risks, you wouldn't be here asking what happens if your business fails. You would be asking how to prevent the business from failing.

> Are you saying that the best way to handle risks is to put your head in the sand and pretend they don't exist?

When it comes to entrepreneurship, yes.

You don't know what will come along and kill your business. Maybe Meta eats your lunch. Maybe the government in your jurisdiction passes a law that is incompatible with your primary monetization strategy. Maybe your house burns down and you need to sell.

Are any of these actually worth worrying over and planning mitigation against? Or are they your own personal black swan events that you just need to handle in the moment?

You know when the best time to worry about getting a job after your startup fails? When your startup fails.

To put it bluntly, this is all about mindset. You can't de-risk starting a company. You can only believe in your ability to overcome the obstacles that will come up as they come up. Planning what happens if you fail shows enough lack of belief in yourself that you almost de-facto will fail, because that exit door is always there if things get hard.

The risk profiles of building a company and taking a trip in your car are definitely different.

Building and running a company is more akin to driving your car through the Amazon rainforest.

I'd argue that if the OP is worried about getting a job after failing, they're not ready to start.

Agreed, which is why you create a plan to build money and wait until you have enough money to execute on that plan.

The question OP raised isn't preparing for money running out, it's presupposing failure.

You haven't even started and you're already planning for failure? You should have more faith in yourself.

> My 2c: you can get things right, but most of the time you won't

I'd argue you'll never get it right. You might get it right at the time, but 'right' will always change over a long enough timespan.

I reached a similar conclusion, luckily before doing too much building. I'm happy with terrariums so far, they scratch my 'living things in closed systems' itch.

Also a metahobbyist.

I've tried everything you have (except weather stations and mechanical pencils) but also make/play guitars, hobbyist electronics, paper making, painting/illustration, fixing up old cars, and MtG among others.

I realized I was being a little ridiculous when I started planning a peltier powered hydroponic cabinet for growing fresh wasabi. Most of that was to do with the disappointing results with peltier cooling temperature deltas.

The garage full of specialist tools is what kills me. I can't imagine how I'll ever use the vacuum chamber I built for epoxy stabilization again, but I have one.