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A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

geoffreylitt.com

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Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#151

Post by navane »

xp84 wrote: post #119

I don't know if I love this more for the sheer usefulness, or for the delightful over-the-top "Proper English Butler" diction. But what really has my attention is: Why is this something I'm reading about on this smart engineer's blog rather than an Apple or Google product release? The fact that even this small set of features is beyond the abilities of either of those two companies to ship -- even with caveats like "…

Because how would you monetize this? Because would google or apple make a product that talks to telegram? Or anything with an open ecosystem?

All the big guys are trying to do is suck the eggs out of their geese faster.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#153

Post by simonw »

qudat wrote: post #130
nullwarp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built up an AI Agent using n8n and email doing exactly this. Works great and was surprised I'd not seen any other place kicking the idea around. Probably my favorite use case is I can shoot it shopping receipts and it'll roughly parse them and dump the line item and cost into a spreadsheet before uploading it to paperless-ngx.

Sounds useful but why do you need an ai agent to do that?

"I can shoot it shopping receipts and it'll roughly parse them and dump the line item and cost into a spreadsheet" - very difficult to do that without using a vision LLM.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#154

Post by angusturner »

The thing this really hits home for me is how Apple is totally asleep at the wheel.

Today I asked Siri “call the last person that texted me”, to try and respond to someone while driving.

Am I surprised it couldn’t do it? Not really at this point, but it is disappointing that there’s such a wide gulf between Siri and even the least capable LLMs.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#155

Post by fmbb »

xp84 wrote: post #122
dcre wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually a good answer to this, namely that narrowly targeting the needs of exactly one family allows you to develop software about 1000x faster. This is an argument in favor of personal software.

The Apple walled garden argues against you here. There are at least 20 million families in America where this holds true: • Everyone in household uses an iPhone • Main adult family members use iCloud Mail or at least use Apple Mail to read other mail • Family members use iCloud contacts and calendars • USPS Informed Delivery could be used (available to most/all US addresses) • It can be ascertained what ZIP code you'…

The thing that is standing in their way is probably that nobody is willing to pay for this what it costs to run.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#156

Post by killerstorm »

xp84 wrote: post #119

I don't know if I love this more for the sheer usefulness, or for the delightful over-the-top "Proper English Butler" diction. But what really has my attention is: Why is this something I'm reading about on this smart engineer's blog rather than an Apple or Google product release? The fact that even this small set of features is beyond the abilities of either of those two companies to ship -- even with caveats like "…

This is literally in the first chapter of Mythical Man-Month:

> One occasionally reads newspaper accounts of how two programmers in a remodeled garage have built an important program that surpasses the best efforts of large teams. And every programmer is prepared to believe such tales, for he knows that he could build any program much faster than the 1000 statements/year reported for industrial teams.

> Why then have not all industrial programming teams been replaced by dedicated garage duos? One must look at what is being produced.

One reason might be that personal data going into a database handled by a highly experimental software might be a non-issue for this dev, but it is a serious risk for Google, Apple, etc.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#157

Post by CaptainFever »

darepublic wrote: post #137
dcre wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually a good answer to this, namely that narrowly targeting the needs of exactly one family allows you to develop software about 1000x faster. This is an argument in favor of personal software.

yes which vibe coding enables.

True, I always thought something like Hypercard was needed to bring personal programming to the masses, but it appears that it might require LLM coding instead. ("I wish an app that did simple task XYZ existed."; "Can you ask ChatGPT to make that for you?")

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#158

Post by benterix »

lolinder wrote: post #128
xp84 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple walled garden argues against you here. There are at least 20 million families in America where this holds true: • Everyone in household uses an iPhone • Main adult family members use iCloud Mail or at least use Apple Mail to read other mail • Family members use iCloud contacts and calendars • USPS Informed Delivery could be used (available to most/all US addresses) • It can be ascertained what ZIP code you'…

Not every one of those families would find the same set of features helpful, so you have to make calls about what's worth developing and what isn't. Making those calls is very difficult because it's tricky to gather data about what will be used and appreciated.

> it's tricky to gather data about what will be used and appreciated

I'm not sure it's so tricky for Apple, and for sure not for Google.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#159

Post by n_ary »

redman25 wrote: post #67
stunnAR wrote: post #28

This is probably naive and looking forward to a correction; isn't sending your info to Claude's API (or really any "AI API") is a violation of your safeguarded privacy data?

You could always run your own server locally if you have a decent gpu. Some of the smaller LLMs are getting pretty good.

Correct. My dusty Intel Nuc is able to run a decent 3B model(thanks to ollama) with fans spinning but does not affect any other running applications. It ks very useful for local hobby projects. Visible lags and freezes begin if I start a 5B+ model locally.

Re: A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

#160

Post by n_ary »

jurgenaut23 wrote: post #55

Love it, such a nice idea coupled with a flawless execution. I think the future of AI looks a lot more like this than half-cooked agent implementations that plagues LinkedIn…

Please share more about this half-cooked agent on Linkedin. I am getting very curious.
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