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ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

simonwillison.net

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Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#41

Post by simonw »

logicprog wrote: post #33
simonw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have certainly become Go-curious thanks to coding agents - I have a medium sized side-project in progress using Go at the moment and it's been surprisingly smooth sailing considering I hardly know the language. The Go standard library is a particularly good fit for building network services and web proxies, which fits this project perfectly.

It's funny seeing you say that, because I've had an entire arc of despising the design of, and peremptorily refusing to use, Go, to really enjoying it, thanks to AI coding agents being able to take care of the boilerplate for me. It turns out that verbosity isn't really a problem when LLMs are the one writing the code based on more high level markdown specs (describing logic, architecture, algorithms, concurrency, et…

Yeah, I much prefer Go to Rust for LLM things because I find Go code easy to read and understand despite having little experience with it - Rust syntax still trips me up.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#42

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

randomtoast wrote: post #4

Maybe soon we have single use applications. Where ChatGPT can write an App for you on-the-fly in a cloud sandbox you interact with it in the browser and fulfill your goal and afterwards the App is shutdown and thrown away.

exe.dev (though there are alternatives like sprites.dev etc. too)

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#43

Post by dec0dedab0de »

behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

or maybe someone will use an LLM to create a JIT that works so well that compiled languages will be gone.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#44

Post by kenjackson »

behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

Has anyone tried creating a language that would be good for LLMs? I feel like what would be good for LLMs might not be the same thing that is good for humans (but I have no evidence or data to support this, just a hunch).

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#45

Post by ljm »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #12
candiddevmike wrote: post #6

Seems like everyone is trying to get ahead of tool calling moving people "off platform" and creating differentiators around what tools are available "locally" to the models etc. This also takes the wind out of the sandboxing folks, as it probably won't be long before the "local" tool calling can effectively do anything you'd need to do on your local machine. I wonder when they'll start offering virtual, persistent de…

> I wonder when they'll start offering virtual, persistent dev environments... A lot of companies have been wanting to move in this direction. Instead of maintaining a fleet of machines, you just get a bunch of thin clients and pay Microsoft of whoever to host the actual workloads. They already do this 'kiosk' style stuff for a lot of front-line staff. Honestly, not having my own local hardware for development sounds…

Coming full circle to renting time from a mainframe.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#46

Post by simonw »

kenjackson wrote: post #44
behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

Has anyone tried creating a language that would be good for LLMs? I feel like what would be good for LLMs might not be the same thing that is good for humans (but I have no evidence or data to support this, just a hunch).

There was an interesting effort in that direction the other day: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/19/nanolang/

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#47

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

simonw wrote: post #39
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh... If people are getting this for free or even as an offering with chatgpt consideirng it becomes subsidized too. Lowend providers are a little in threat with their 7$/year deals if Chatgpt provides 56 cores for free. this doesn't seem right to provide so many cores for (free??) Are you running this in your free account as you mention in blog post simon or in your paid account?

My $20/month paid account. I used a free account to check if the feature was available there and it tried to get me to upgrade two prompts in (just enough for me to confirm the container worked and could install packages).

Oh thanks for your reply Simon!

> I used a free account to check if the feature was available there and it tried to get me to upgrade two prompts in (just enough for me to confirm the container worked and could install packages).

Wait it tried... to make you upgrade your chatgpt account from free to paid account? Sorry I didn't get what you meant here

(Funnily I asked chatgpt about what it thinks of your text and it says that It thinks that it tries to ask you to pay up)

Is this thing (maybe some additions to make it like sprites.dev?) + some ad features for basic query gonna be how openAI Monetizes?

I mean I am part of lowend community (so indie community of hosting providers) and they are all really pissed and some shutting down because of ram prices increases. OpenAI has all the ram in the world right now so is it trying to be a monopoly in this instance?

I just found it to be really dystopian that it asked you to pay. Can you share me a pic of it if possible or share the free conversation. Heck, I might have to try it now on my free account as well.

Curiosity's piqued right now.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#48

Post by phainopepla2 »

nomel wrote: post #7
behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

> But now that most code is written by LLMs I'm sure it will eventually be true, but this seems very unlikely right now . I wish it were true, because we're in a time where generic software developers are still paid well, so doing nothing all day, with this salary, would be very welcome!

Code written by LLM != developer doing nothing

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#49

Post by goinghjuk »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #37
simonw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might work! You would have to figure out how to get Whisper working in there but I'm sure that's possible with a bit of creativity concerning uploading files and maybe running a build with the available C compiler. It appears to have 4GB of RAM and 56 (!?) CPU cores https://chatgpt.com/share/6977e1f8-0f94-8006-9973-e9fab6d244...

Huh... If people are getting this for free or even as an offering with chatgpt consideirng it becomes subsidized too. Lowend providers are a little in threat with their 7$/year deals if Chatgpt provides 56 cores for free. this doesn't seem right to provide so many cores for (free??) Are you running this in your free account as you mention in blog post simon or in your paid account?

by default containers do not limit core count, you'll get all available on the host/VM.

these cores are shared with all the other containers, could be hundreds more

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#50

Post by logicprog »

simonw wrote: post #41
logicprog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny seeing you say that, because I've had an entire arc of despising the design of, and peremptorily refusing to use, Go, to really enjoying it, thanks to AI coding agents being able to take care of the boilerplate for me. It turns out that verbosity isn't really a problem when LLMs are the one writing the code based on more high level markdown specs (describing logic, architecture, algorithms, concurrency, et…

Yeah, I much prefer Go to Rust for LLM things because I find Go code easy to read and understand despite having little experience with it - Rust syntax still trips me up.

Not to mention that, in general, there's a lot more to keep in mind with Rust.

I've written probably tens of thousands of lines of Rust at this point, and while I used to absolutely adore it, I've really completely fallen out of love with it, and part of it is that it's not just the syntax that's horrible to look at (which I only realized after spending some time with Go and Python), but you have to always keep in mind a lot of things:

- the borrow checker - lifetimes, - all the different kinds of types that represent different ways of doing memory management - parse out sometimes extremely complex and nearly point-free iterator chaining - deal with a complex type system that can become very unwieldy if you're not careful - and more I'm probably not thinking of right now

Not to mention the way the standard library exposes you to the full bore of all the platform-specific complexities it's designed on top of, and forces you to deal with them, instead of exposing a best-effort POSIX-like unified interface, so path and file handling can be hellish. (this is basically the reverse of fasterthanlime's point in the famous "I want off mr. golang's wild ride" essay).

It's just a lot more cognitive overhead to just getting something done if all you want is a fast statically compiled, modern programming language. And it makes it even harder to review code. People complain about Go boilerplate, but really, IME, Rust boilerplate is far, far worse.

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