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Tools: Code Is All You Need

lucumr.pocoo.org

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Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#51

Post by shelajev »

vasusen wrote: post #40

I think the Playwright MCP is a really good example of the overall problem that the author brings up. However, I couldn’t really understand if he’s saying that the Playwright MCP is good to use for your own app or whether he means for your own app just tell the LLM directly to export Playwright code.

it's the latter: "you can actually start telling it to write a Playwright Python script instead and run that".

and while running the code might faster, it's unclear whether that approach scales well. Sending an MCP tool command to click the button that says "X", is something a small local LLM can do. Writing complex code after parsing significant amount of HTML (for correct selectors for example) probably needs a managed model.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#52

Post by dingnuts »

JyB wrote: post #46

> It demands too much context. This is solved trivially by having default initial prompts. All majors tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI have ways to set them up. > You pass all your tools to an LLM and ask it to filter it down based on the task at hand. So far, there hasn't been much better approaches proposed. Why is a "better" approach needed? If modern LLMs can properly figure it out? It's not like LLMs don't k…

> cost: They keep getting cheaper and cheaper

no they don't[0], the cost is just still hidden from you but the freebies will end just like MoviePass and cheap Ubers

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3lsw4vatg3k2b

"Cursor released a $200-a-month subscription then made their $20-a-month subscription worse (worse output, slower) - yet it seems even on Max they're rate limiting people!"

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3lsw3zwgw4c2h

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#53

Post by osigurdson »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #31

Unpopular Opinion: I hate Bash. Hate it. And hate the ecosystem of Unix CLIs that are from the 80s and have the most obtuse, inscrutable APIs ever designed. Also this ecosystem doesn’t work on Windows — which, as a game dev, is my primary environment. And no, WSL does not count. I don’t think the world needs yet another shell scripting language. They’re all pretty mediocre at best. But maybe this is an opportunity to…

Nobody likes coding in bash but everyone does it (a little) because it is everywhere.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#54

Post by galdre »

My absolute favorite use of MCP so far is Bruce Hauman's clojure-mcp. In short, it gives the LLM (a) a bash tool, (b) a persistent Clojure REPL, and (c) structural editing tools.

The effect is that it's far more efficient at editing Clojure code than any purely string-diff-based approach, and if you write a good test suite it can rapidly iterate back and forth just editing files, reloading them, and then re-running the test suite at the REPL -- just like I would. It's pretty incredible to watch.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#55

Post by jitl »

dist-epoch wrote: post #49
simonw wrote: post #25

Something I've realized about LLM tool use is that it means that if you can reduce a problem to something that can be solved by an LLM in a sandbox using tools in a loop, you can brute force that problem. The job then becomes identifying those problems and figuring out how to configure a sandbox for them, what tools to provide and how to define the success criteria for the model. That still takes significant skill an…

I've been using a VM for a sandbox, just to make sure it won't delete my files if it goes insane. With some host data directories mounted read only inside the VM. This creates some friction though. Feels like a tool which runs the AI agent in a VM, but then copies it's output to the host machine after some checks would help, so that it would feel that you are running it natively on the host.

This is very easy to do with Docker. Not sure it you want the vm layer as an extra security boundary, but even so you can just specify the VM’s docker api endpoint to spawn processes and copy files in/out from shell scripts.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#56

Post by hollerith »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #31

Unpopular Opinion: I hate Bash. Hate it. And hate the ecosystem of Unix CLIs that are from the 80s and have the most obtuse, inscrutable APIs ever designed. Also this ecosystem doesn’t work on Windows — which, as a game dev, is my primary environment. And no, WSL does not count. I don’t think the world needs yet another shell scripting language. They’re all pretty mediocre at best. But maybe this is an opportunity to…

Me, too. Also, Unix as a whole is overrated. One reason it won was an agreement mediated by a Federal judge presiding over an anti-trust trial that AT&T would not enter the computer market while IBM would not enter the telecommunications market, so Unix was distributed at zero cost rather than sold.

Want to get me talking reverentially about the pioneers of our industry? Talk to me about Doug Engelbart, Xerox PARC and the Macintosh team at Apple. There was some brilliant work!

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#57

Post by JyB »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #50
JyB wrote: post #46

> It demands too much context. This is solved trivially by having default initial prompts. All majors tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI have ways to set them up. > You pass all your tools to an LLM and ask it to filter it down based on the task at hand. So far, there hasn't been much better approaches proposed. Why is a "better" approach needed? If modern LLMs can properly figure it out? It's not like LLMs don't k…

> This is solved trivially by having default initial prompts. All majors tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI have ways to set them up. That only makes it worse. The MCP tools available all add to the initial context. The more tools, the more of the context is populated by MCP tool definitions.

Do you mean that some tools (MCP clients) pass all functions of all configured MCP servers in the initial prompt?

If that's the case: I understand the knee-jerk reaction but if it works? Also what theoretically prevents altering the prompt chaining logic in these tools to only expose a condensed list of MCP servers, not their whole capabilities, and only inject details based on LLM outputs? Doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#58

Post by whiplash451 »

dingnuts wrote: post #45
whiplash451 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take but too bearish on LLMs in my opinion. LLMs have already found large-scale usage (deep research, translation) which makes them more ubiquitous today than 3D printers ever will or could have been.

And yet you didn't provide a single reference link! Every case of LLM usage that I've seen claimed about those things has been largely a lie -- guess you won't take the opportunity to be the first to present a real example. Just another rumor.

My reference is the daily usage of chatgpt around me (outside of tech circles).

I don’t want to sound like a hard-core LLM believer. I get your point and it’s fair.

I just wanted to point out that the current usage of chatgpt is a lot broader than that of 3D printers even at the peak hype of it.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#59

Post by dingnuts »

whiplash451 wrote: post #58
dingnuts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you didn't provide a single reference link! Every case of LLM usage that I've seen claimed about those things has been largely a lie -- guess you won't take the opportunity to be the first to present a real example. Just another rumor.

My reference is the daily usage of chatgpt around me (outside of tech circles). I don’t want to sound like a hard-core LLM believer. I get your point and it’s fair. I just wanted to point out that the current usage of chatgpt is a lot broader than that of 3D printers even at the peak hype of it.

Outside of tech circles it looks like NFTs: people following hype using tech they don't understand which will be popular until the downsides we're aware of that they are ignorant to have consequences, and then the market will reflect the shift in opinion.

Re: Tools: Code Is All You Need

#60

Post by jangxx »

foobarbecue wrote: post #29
pclowes wrote: post #5

Directionally I think this is right. Most LLM usage at scale tends to be filling the gaps between two hardened interfaces. The reliability comes not from the LLM inference and generation but the interfaces themselves only allowing certain configuration to work with them. LLM output is often coerced back into something more deterministic such as types, or DB primary keys. The value of the LLM is determined by how well…

Hype cycle for drones and VR was similar -- at the peak, you have people claiming drones will take over package delivery and everyone will spend their day in VR. Reality is that the applicability is more narrow.

I mean both of these things are actually happening (drone deliveries and people spending a lot of time in VR), just at a much much smaller scale than it was hyped up to be.
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