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Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

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Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#191

Post by tgtweak »

dartos wrote: post #83
tgtweak wrote: post #82

been using cline extension in vscode (which can execute commands and look at the output on terminal) and it's an incredibly adept sysadmin, cloud architect and data engineer. I like that cline lets you approve/decline execution requests and you can run it without sending the output which is safer from a data perspective. It's cool to have this natively on the remote system though. I think a safer approach would be to…

Are you an adept sysadmin, cloud architect, and/or data engineer? It’s a weird catch-22 giving praise like that to LLMs. If you are, then you might be able to intuit and fill in the gaps left my the LLM and not even know it. And if you’re not, then how could you judge? Not really much to do with that you were saying, really, just a thought I had.

I would consider myself adept at all three, not top 1% in either but the intersection of all 3 easily.

Context I have hired hundreds of engineers and built many engineering teams from scratch to 50+, and have been doing systems administration, solutions architecture, infrastructure design, devops, cloud orchestration and data platform design for 25 years.

I'm not bluffing when I say Claude's latest sonnet model and Cline in vscode has really been 99th percentile good on everything I've thrown at it (with some direction, as needed) and has done more productive, quality work than a team of 10 engineers in the last week alone.

If you haven't tried it I can understand your pessimism.

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#192

Post by jahooma »

Terretta wrote: post #187
draebek wrote: post #122

Congratulations on your launch! But I confess that I am really confused. This sounds exactly like Aider, but closed source and it's locked into a single LLM API? I just watched you use it, and looks a lot like Aider too? Why would I use this over Aider? I've seen people say "you don't have to add files to Codebuff", but Aider tells me when the LLM has requested to see files. I just have to approve it. If that bothers…

I don't think you're missing anything. Aider tends to maintain near "state of the art" including e.g. treesitter, and an actually refined (as in, iterated improvements over time) user experience. Aider has been refining for 8000 commits since May of 2023. Codebuff "all started" circa Claude Sonnet 3.5. The story of discovery (e.g. git patch) at best feels like a lack of researching the landscape since leaderboards fo…

Thanks for your reply! I started Codebuff without being aware of Aider. I actually have not yet tried Aider (though I plan to try it soon!).

It's totally true that a lot of the development of Codebuff is merely me (and Brandon) working through a lot of the problems that Aider already solved! That makes sense.

Partly, my thesis is that if you start after Sonnet 3.5 is out, that you design things differently. For example, I started without manual file selection and worked to make it more like an agent that has native access to your environment.

Needless to say, I'm a fan of the work Paul has done on Aider, and I've appreciated the benchmarks and guides he's created and shared publicly. And Cline is also an amazing project which I want to try out soon as well!

With respect to privacy, we have pledged not to store your codebase, and mainly store logs that we use to debug the application. When seeing users use Codebuff, I mean I literally watched them use it, as we've done many in-person user tests, plus the Manifold Team has been using Codebuff for a while.

We also intend to release a Privacy Mode, like Cursor has, where we will not store anything at all, not even the logs of your interactions!

It makes sense to be a bit skeptical of Codebuff, since we are so new, but I intend to not let our users down!

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#194

Post by sagarpatil »

$99/month lol. I have Perplexity, OpenAI, Claude and Cursor subscription and I end up paying way less than $99/month. Clearly you haven't done any research on price. Aider, Cline are open source, in not sure why someone would subscribe to it unless it's the top model on http://swebench.com/

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#195

Post by bunnyman »

jahooma wrote: post #192
Terretta wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're missing anything. Aider tends to maintain near "state of the art" including e.g. treesitter, and an actually refined (as in, iterated improvements over time) user experience. Aider has been refining for 8000 commits since May of 2023. Codebuff "all started" circa Claude Sonnet 3.5. The story of discovery (e.g. git patch) at best feels like a lack of researching the landscape since leaderboards fo…

Thanks for your reply! I started Codebuff without being aware of Aider. I actually have not yet tried Aider (though I plan to try it soon!). It's totally true that a lot of the development of Codebuff is merely me (and Brandon) working through a lot of the problems that Aider already solved! That makes sense. Partly, my thesis is that if you start after Sonnet 3.5 is out, that you design things differently. For examp…

Interesting!

Being in the same product space for more than 3 months, I wonder how one can not come across 2 popular open source tools that do more or less the same thing.

Like Aider has 21k stars, and Cline has around 11k stars. Both these product names come up on HN, Reddit frequently.

Curious to know if YC does some research on existing products before backing a new business.

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#196

Post by jahooma »

handfuloflight wrote: post #123
brandonchen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruft that built up over time But you make a good point, I'll write a ticket to remove it soon.

Codebuff waiting in the wings to implement.

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbDExYmM5Y3N0eHJ...

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#197

Post by ErikBjare »

bunnyman wrote: post #195
jahooma wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your reply! I started Codebuff without being aware of Aider. I actually have not yet tried Aider (though I plan to try it soon!). It's totally true that a lot of the development of Codebuff is merely me (and Brandon) working through a lot of the problems that Aider already solved! That makes sense. Partly, my thesis is that if you start after Sonnet 3.5 is out, that you design things differently. For examp…

Interesting! Being in the same product space for more than 3 months, I wonder how one can not come across 2 popular open source tools that do more or less the same thing. Like Aider has 21k stars, and Cline has around 11k stars. Both these product names come up on HN, Reddit frequently. Curious to know if YC does some research on existing products before backing a new business.

This was surprising to me too.

I've also built a similar free and open-source tool gptme (2.5k stars), since the start of last year (GPT-3.5). It has been impossible to ignore the great work done by Aider.

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#198

Post by ErikBjare »

jahooma wrote: post #136
draebek wrote: post #122

Congratulations on your launch! But I confess that I am really confused. This sounds exactly like Aider, but closed source and it's locked into a single LLM API? I just watched you use it, and looks a lot like Aider too? Why would I use this over Aider? I've seen people say "you don't have to add files to Codebuff", but Aider tells me when the LLM has requested to see files. I just have to approve it. If that bothers…

It sounds minor that it finds files for you, but if you try it out, you'll see that it's a giant leap in UX and the extra files help it generate better code because it has more examples from your codebase.

But you said you haven't tried Aider, how can you say it's a "leap in UX"?

My own tool `gptme` lets the agent interactively read/collect context too (as does Anthropic in their latest minimal-harness submission to SWE-bench), it's nothing novel.

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#199

Post by imranhou »

What do you think about having codebuff write a parser for javascript? Something that is specifically built to enhance itself that goes beyond the regular parsers and creates a more useful structure of the codebase to be then used for RAG for code writing? This would be double useful as a great demo for your product as well as enhancing your product intrinsically. For example the new parser can not only build the syntax tree but also provide relevant commentary for each method to describe what it does to better pick code context.

Re: Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you

#200

Post by brandonchen »

hubris24 wrote: post #171

I don't see the value. Why is this better than Cursor? What guarantees that you won't steal my code? Wasn't there a recent startup in F24 that stole code from another YC company and fire was quickly put out by everyone?

Good question – here are a few reasons:

- It chooses files to read automatically on each message — unlike Cursor’s composer feature. It also reads a lot more than Cursor's @codebase command. - It takes 0 clicks — Codebuff just edits your files directly (you can always peek at the git diffs to see what it’s doing). - It has full access to your existing tools, scripts, and packages — Codebuff can install packages, run terminal commands and tests, etc. - It is portable to any development environment

We use OpenAI and Anthropic, so unfortunately we have to abide by their policies. But we only grab snippets of your code at any given point, so your codebase isn't seen by any entity in its entirety. We're also considering open-sourcing, so that might be a stronger privacy guarantee.

I should note that my cofounder James uses both and gets plenty of value by combining them. Myself, I'm more of a plain VSCode guy (Zed-curious, I'll admit). But because Codebuff lives in your terminal, it fits in anywhere you need.

No comment on our batchmates

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