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We put a coding agent in a while loop

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Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#31

Post by dhorthy »

beefnugs wrote: post #28

"At one point we tried “improving” the prompt with Claude’s help. It ballooned to 1,500 words. The agent immediately got slower and dumber. We went back to 103 words and it was back on track." Isn't this the exact opposite of every other piece of advice we have gotten in a year? Another general feedback just recently, someone said we need to generate 10 times, because one out of those will be "worth reviewing" How ca…

Hmm what sorts of advice in the last year are you referring to? Like the “run it ten times and pick the best one” thing? Or something else?

I kind of agree that picking from 10 poorly-promoted projects is dumb.

The engineering is in setting up the engine and verification so one agent can get it right (or 90% right) on a single run (of the infinite ish loop)

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#32

Post by CuriouslyC »

dhorthy wrote: post #29
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

When Claude starts deploying Kafka clusters I’m outro

It's already happening brother, https://github.com/containers/kubernetes-mcp-server.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#33

Post by CuriouslyC »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #14

> After finishing the port, most of the agents settled for writing extra tests or continuously updating agent/TODO.md to clarify how "done" they were. In one instance, the agent actually used pkill to terminate itself after realizing it was stuck in an infinite loop. Ok, now that is funny! On so many levels. Now, for the project itself, a few thoughts: - this was tried before, about 1.5 years ago there was a project…

I started building a project by trying to wire in existing open source stuff. When I looked at the build and stuff that would cause me to bring in, and the actual stuff I needed from the open source tools, it turned out to be MUCH faster/cleaner to just get Claude to check out the repo and port the stuff I needed directly.

Now I do a calculus with dependencies. Do I want to track the upstream, is the rigging around the core I want valuable, is it well maintained? If not, just port and move on.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#35

Post by cogogo »

gregpr07 wrote: post #2

AGI was just 1 bash for loop away all this time I guess. Insane project.

Less flippantly that was sort of my thought. I’m probably a paranoid idiot and I’m not really sure I can articulate this idea properly but I can imagine a less concise but broader prompt and an agent configured in a way it has privileges you dont want it to have or a path to escalate them and its not quite AGI but its a virus on steroids - like a company or resource (think utilities) killer. I hope Im just missing something but these models seem pretty capable of wreaking all kinds of havoc if they just keep looping and have access nobody in their right mind wants.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#36

Post by cogogo »

ghuntley wrote: post #15
dhorthy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was deeply unsettling among other things

It is, isn't it mate? Shit, I stumbled upon Ralph back in February and it shook me to the core.

Not that I want to be shaken but what is Ralph? A quick search showed me some marketing tools but that cant be what you are referring to is it?

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#37

Post by hoppp »

I wanted to know how much it cost?

I would be scared to run this without knowing the exact cost.

Its not a good idea to do it without a payment cap for sure, its a new way to wake up with a huge bill the next day.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#39

Post by throwup238 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #19
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

Superfund repos.

Now that's an open source funding model governments can get behind.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#40

Post by ghuntley »

cogogo wrote: post #36
ghuntley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, isn't it mate? Shit, I stumbled upon Ralph back in February and it shook me to the core.

Not that I want to be shaken but what is Ralph? A quick search showed me some marketing tools but that cant be what you are referring to is it?

Ralph is a technique. The stupidest technique possible. Running an agent in a while true loop. https://ghuntley.com/ralph
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