Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 205 posts

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#91

Post by rvz »

whatshisface wrote: post #79
popcorncowboy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenAI has the GPT models, not Microsoft. Haha no. There is no future where OpenAI operates independently of Microsoft. OpenAI is functionally beholden to MS. 49% is a paper contrivance to present a facade that they're still in control. They're not. The tail is wagging the dog, and in this case the tail is a trillion dollar dragon that OpenAI lowered the drawbridge and invited inside.

Why do you say that?

Because it is true.

At this point, Microsoft has partially acquired OpenAI and is extending their exclusivity deals to use their offerings.

But the only way to compete against them is with open source AI models that are good enough substitutes for OpenAI’s offerings.

With Stable Diffusion being open sourced, it completely ruined monetising options for DALLE-2 and threatened OpenAI to the point where they rushed out ChatGPT.

The same thing happened with GPT-3 and is going to happen again to ChatGPT and we will quickly see an open-source equivalent.

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#92

Post by yunwal »

immortalloom wrote: post #13
shubhamjain wrote: post #7

From the video, Second looks more like a UI wrapped over a boilerplate generators that have existed for quite a while. It's a pretty powerful one, and that can be very useful in itself but how is AI involved here? If it is, was it needed in the first place? I was expecting the inputs to be more along, "give me an app to manage a restaurant", but the inputs are modules (Forgot password, billing), which are generic pie…

Great question! So all of the files are generated with either compiles or GPT-3, or if the files already exist on the repo and need to be modified, the bots use GPT-3 code edits to modify the files. $299/project/month will sound expensive if you compare it to starter kits (usually free), templates (usually Also, yea pricing is hard! It may change.

Is it true that the larger the app, the less effective/accurate the bot is? In that case, might it be more sensible to charge a 1-time price?

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#93

Post by k2052 »

I had a similarish vision/idea about 7ish years ago https://github.com/Hactar-js/hactar I was way too early though and it didn't work well. I have recoded it probably half a dozen times since then and the latest prototype attempt used GPT as the core tech.

The biggest hurdle I found was that it just wasn't deterministic enough. You can work around this with mixing and matching custom compilers into the workflow but then you run into a "only works with a limited set of components and frameworks" problem; and at that point it is basically a boilerplate tool with extra steps.

I found a workflow with prompts + some Emacs wizardy to make them runnable with a few keystrokes got me 99% of the same feature set without any of the headaches of trying to fully automate it so I stopped work on it. A prompt library and an editor extension is hard to find a userbase for though so I have yet to open source or launch anything.

I'm still not sure if these sort of tools are too early or the exact right time to be built. They won't work well yet, but maybe the issues can be worked out when LLMs tooling matures, maybe not, hard to say. Watching closely to see what happens in the space!

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#94

Post by lettergram »

atleta wrote: post #70

While I have been expecting AI to replace programmers for a while, the thing I was never sure about whether this will manifest itself as a business for some companies or whether it means the end of people creating apps altogether. Another risk for building businesses on AI in general is that unlike with software that anyone can build (e.g. for a niche), AI solutions seem to be costly because they require a lot of dat…

I just released - https://vocalvoters.com/

It sends an AI generated letter to a congress person in a seconds. Users can edit it, but frankly the results are amazingly good.

I bring it up because effectively exactly what you described - a shim on top of 4 APIs. (Code is open sourced, link on the site)

The question is how will AI replace what I have?

The AI might get better, but ultimately someone has to mail the letter (I use a different API for that). Someone has to ensure there’s no threats (we do a manual review, combined with the AI review) and someone needs to verify location.

Sure the AI systems of the future could theoretically do all that, but it’s still the same work/services.

Before the AI the service I built required me to manually create templates or users to write the full letter. Frankly, AI opened up this business, not closed it. It was more expensive and a lot more logistical work to manually generate these letters.

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#96

Post by immortalloom »

yunwal wrote: post #92
immortalloom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! So all of the files are generated with either compiles or GPT-3, or if the files already exist on the repo and need to be modified, the bots use GPT-3 code edits to modify the files. $299/project/month will sound expensive if you compare it to starter kits (usually free), templates (usually Also, yea pricing is hard! It may change.

Is it true that the larger the app, the less effective/accurate the bot is? In that case, might it be more sensible to charge a 1-time price?

Good question! I believe the accuracy will still be good, but it will just be more work for the bots to get it right (lots more files and code to reason with). So my OpenAI costs will prob go up a lot for bigger code bases. Hadn't thought about that!

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#97

Post by immortalloom »

stephendause wrote: post #78
immortalloom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea! That kinda works, except that libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web, often times you need to rebuild it anyways. I also want to be more supportive of junior developers. Second can help scaffold and get large chunks of standard code in place for them to build on, rather than starting with empty files. This is especially useful when adding a new feature to an existing web application (i…

> libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web Speaking of that issue, wasn't GPT-3 trained with data that doesn't go past 2021? Won't this be an issue for any AI assistant using GPT-3 to write code?

I was worried about this as well. However, I think the solution to this is to create fine-tuned models on specific areas that OpenAI models won't be as knowledgable about (like Next.js 13 for example)

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#98

Post by mritchie712 »

immortalloom wrote: post #30
immortalloom wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. LOL! Sorry! Volume is tricky to get right. I'll fix this with my next video. 2. Agree 100%! Second bots are becoming more sophisticated, but the truth is I am still pretty early. The video on this post, and on the website, is actually about a month old. I had planned on making an updated video with more interesting scenarios, but I ran out of time! I will have an updated video within the next two weeks. I also nee…

Also about being a solo founder. It's rough!

I know solo founder is #1 on this list, but fights between founders is #17, so we're in the clear on that one.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#99

Post by omarfarooq »

immortalloom wrote: post #63
anonymous344 wrote: post #56

yes but what does it do?

The main value prop of Second is that it can generate large volumes of code for common web app features, and integrate it into your codebase via GitHub

So to confirm it won't generate new features from prompts, but only templated scenarios? Is there a list of templated scenarios that you currently support?

Re: Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps

#100

Post by rvz »

skilled wrote: post #59

No offense but that demo video is pathetic not to mention the weird background music. Actually, I think the entire thing is way too rushed and you haven't thought this through at all. Are you seriously so desperate to ride this stupid AI hype that you couldn't do a better job at showcasing what the app can actually do? I am sorry for being so critical, but I believe I am right. With a free account, you can do like tw…

We need more direct criticism like this.

I’m not even sure if this even needs AI in the first place or how this is any different to a boilerplate generator using templates. An AI can hallucinate and generate a broken codebase which means it needs to be checked again for its correctness.

I guess if this was a web3 project template generator funded by YC, I would be seeing everyone including the mountains throwing heated exchanges at the founder.

Post reply on HN