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Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

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Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#51

Post by danenania »

viraptor wrote: post #29
sagarpatil wrote: post #26

I spend hours everyday researching AI products. Why am I only hearing about plandex now? Looks very promising, I’ll give it a try. Please up your marketing game, the product looks solid!

Maybe because they had a release hiatus for a bit. V1 was cool and had great ideas / interface, but needed some polish in practice (new models weren't well supported, it for in endless cycles, etc.) The explicit planning, server model, visible steps and a few other novel things were impressive though. Hopefully the V2 will bring the polish and reliability.

Yeah, you're spot on. Rather than just continuously marketing and iterating on the v1, which was designed more for AI codegen's early experimental phase, I decided to go heads down on engineering and try to get to more of a step change on reliability and robustness.

It's not a total rewrite and is still based on v1's foundations, but quite a lot of the core functionality has been reworked.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#52

Post by danenania »

mertleee wrote: post #39

CLI is the worst possible interface for coding llms. Especially for "larger" projects.

There are pros and cons to different interfaces for sure. Personally, I'd want to have a CLI-based codegen tool in my toolkit even if I hadn't created Plandex, as there are benefits (environment configuration, execution control, file management, piping data, to name a few) that you can't easily get outside of a CLI.

I also personally find the IDE unwieldy for reviewing large diffs (e.g. dozens of files). I much prefer a vertically-scrolling side-by-side comparison view like GitHub's PR review UI (which Plandex offers).

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#53

Post by lsllc »

danenania wrote: post #48
lsllc wrote: post #34

The link in the README.md to "local-mode quickstart" seems broken.

Do you mean at the top of the README or somewhere else? The link at the top seems to be working for me.

In the table showing the hosting options lower down in the README, the 3rd row is titled "Self-hosted/Local Mode", but the link in "Follow the *local-mode quickstart* to get started." goes to a GH 404 page.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#54

Post by danenania »

lsllc wrote: post #53
danenania wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean at the top of the README or somewhere else? The link at the top seems to be working for me.

In the table showing the hosting options lower down in the README, the 3rd row is titled "Self-hosted/Local Mode", but the link in "Follow the *local-mode quickstart* to get started." goes to a GH 404 page.

I see—fixed it, thanks!

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#55

Post by lightdot »

danenania wrote: post #43
lightdot wrote: post #40

From the Github page: "curl -sL https://plandex.ai/install.sh | bash" Enticing users to blindly run remote 3rd party code on their machines is IMHO not a proper thing to do. This approach creates a dangerous mindset when it comes to security and good practices in general.

You can read the script before installing. It's pretty straightforward—just grabs the appropriate binary from GitHub and puts it in /usr/local/bin. Installing via package managers or installers also runs remote 3rd party code on your machine, so I don't see much difference from a security perspective. You should make sure you trust the source before installing anything.

Of course one can and should read the script before running it, but the instructions promote just the opposite.

Even if we skip a step ahead and consider that this script then installs a binary blob... the situation doesn't get any better, does it?

If you find any of this as something normal and acceptable, I can only strongly disagree. Such bad practices should be discouraged.

On the other hand, using a distro's package manager and a set of community approved packages is a far better choice when installing software, security vise. I really don't see how you could compare the two without plainly seeing the difference, from a security perspective.

As an alternative, if the software is not available through a distro's package manager, one should inspect and compile the code. This project provides the instructions to do so, they are just not promoted as a first choice.

I can't help coming to a conclusion, that you've largely made my point about bad practices and having a wrong mindset when it comes to software security.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#56

Post by zamalek »

Have you considered adding LSP support? I anticipate go-to-defintion/implementation and go-to-usages being pretty useful via MCP or function calling. I started doing this for an internal tool a while back (to help with understanding some really poorly written Ruby) but I don't find any joy in coding this kind of stuff and have been hoping for someone else to do it instead.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#57

Post by danenania »

lightdot wrote: post #55
danenania wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read the script before installing. It's pretty straightforward—just grabs the appropriate binary from GitHub and puts it in /usr/local/bin. Installing via package managers or installers also runs remote 3rd party code on your machine, so I don't see much difference from a security perspective. You should make sure you trust the source before installing anything.

Of course one can and should read the script before running it, but the instructions promote just the opposite. Even if we skip a step ahead and consider that this script then installs a binary blob... the situation doesn't get any better, does it? If you find any of this as something normal and acceptable, I can only strongly disagree. Such bad practices should be discouraged. On the other hand, using a distro's pac…

Well, I simply disagree with you that it's a "bad practice", and I have a fair amount of security experience. But you're entitled to your opinion.

You can also build from source if you prefer: https://docs.plandex.ai/install/#build-from-source

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#58

Post by danenania »

zamalek wrote: post #56

Have you considered adding LSP support? I anticipate go-to-defintion/implementation and go-to-usages being pretty useful via MCP or function calling. I started doing this for an internal tool a while back (to help with understanding some really poorly written Ruby) but I don't find any joy in coding this kind of stuff and have been hoping for someone else to do it instead.

Yeah, I've definitely thought about this. I would likely try to do it through tree-sitter to keep it as light and language-agnostic as possible vs. language-specific LSP integrations, but I agree it could be very helpful.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#59

Post by killerstorm »

I like the idea but it did not quite work out of box.

There was some issue with sign-in, it seems pin requested via web does not work in console (so the web suggesting using --pin option is misleading).

I tried BYO plan as I already have openrouter API key. But it seems like default model pack splits its API use between openrouter and openai, and I ended up stuck with "o3-mini does not exist".

And my whole motivation was basically trying Gemini 2.5 Pro it seems like that requires some trial-and-error configuration. (gemini-exp pack doesn't quite work now.)

The difference between FOSS and BYO plan is not clear: seems like installation process is different, but is the benefit of paid plan that it would store my stuff on server? I'd really rather not TBH, so it has negative value.

Re: Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks

#60

Post by vunderba »

killerstorm wrote: post #59

I like the idea but it did not quite work out of box. There was some issue with sign-in, it seems pin requested via web does not work in console (so the web suggesting using --pin option is misleading). I tried BYO plan as I already have openrouter API key. But it seems like default model pack splits its API use between openrouter and openai, and I ended up stuck with "o3-mini does not exist". And my whole motivation…

Yeah, I noticed that (needing a dedicated OpenAI key) as well for the BYO key plan. It's a little bit odd considering that open router has access to the open AI models.

https://openrouter.ai/openai

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