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

simonwillison.net

71–80 of 336 posts

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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I want to create a language that allows an LLM to dynamically decide what to do. A non dertermistic programing language, which options to drop down into JavaScript or even C if you need to specify certain behaviors. I'd need to be much better at this though.

What does that even mean?

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

#72
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 Is this true? It seems to be a massive assumption.

Replace _is_ with _can be_ and I think the general point still stands.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I want to create a language that allows an LLM to dynamically decide what to do. A non dertermistic programing language, which options to drop down into JavaScript or even C if you need to specify certain behaviors. I'd need to be much better at this though.

You're describing a multi-agent long horizon workflow that can be accomplished with any programming language we have today.

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

#74
post #2

Regular default ChatGPT can also now run code in Node.js, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, Swift, Kotlin, C and C++. I'm not sure when these new features landed because they're not listed anywhere in the official ChatGPT release notes, but I checked it with a free account and it's available there as well.

Shame no c# in that list

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

#75
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But now that most code is written by LLMs Is this true? It seems to be a massive assumption.

Replace _is_ with _can be_ and I think the general point still stands.

Sounds like just as big an assumption.

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

#76
post #17

Not sure if this is still working. I tried getting it to install cowsay and it ran into authentication issues. Does it work for other people?

Can you share the transcript?

https://chatgpt.com/share/6977f9d7-ca94-8000-b1a0-8b1a994e58...

The transcript doesn't show it (I think it faked it) but here's the code in the sidebar:

> bash -lc mkdir -p /mnt/data/cowsay-demo && cd /mnt/data/cowsay-demo && npm init -y >/dev/null && npm i cowsay@latest >/dev/null && echo 'Installed cowsay version:' && node -e "console.log(require('cowsay/package.json').version)"

  npm error code E401
  npm error Incorrect or missing password.
  npm error If you were trying to login, change your password, create an
  npm error authentication token or enable two-factor authentication then
  npm error that means you likely typed your password in incorrectly.
  npm error Please try again, or recover your password at:
  npm error   https://www.npmjs.com/forgot
  npm error
  npm error If you were doing some other operation then your saved credentials are
  npm error probably out of date. To correct this please try logging in again with:
  npm error   npm login
  npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /home/oai/.npm/_logs/2026-01-26T21_20_00_322Z-debug-0.log
> Checking and overriding npm registry > It seems like the registry option is protected, possibly pointing to an internal OpenAI registry that requires authentication. To bypass this, I can override the registry in the command with npm i cowsay --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/. Let's give this a try and see if it works.

It's unclear if that helped.

I tried again and it worked. It seems like I have to ask for it to do things "in the container" or it will just give me directions about how to do it.

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

#77
Did I miss the boat on chatgpt? Is there something more to it than the web chat interface?

I jumped on the Claude Code bandwagon and I dropped off chatgpt.

I find the chatgpt voice interface to be infuriating; it literally talks in circles and just spews summary garbage whenever I ask it anything remotely specific.

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

#78
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, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go

The LLM still benefits from the abstraction provided by Python (fewer tokens and less cognitive load). I could see a pipeline working where one model writes in Python or so, then another model is tasked to compile it into a more performant language

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

#79
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 Is this true? It seems to be a massive assumption.

By lines of code produced in total? Probably true. By usefulness? Unclear.

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

#80

Did I miss the boat on chatgpt? Is there something more to it than the web chat interface? I jumped on the Claude Code bandwagon and I dropped off chatgpt. I find the chatgpt voice interface to be infuriating; it literally talks in circles and just spews summary garbage whenever I ask it anything remotely specific.

I still like ChatGPT for search more than Claude, though I think Claude may be catching up now. Gemini is getting good at search too (as you'd hope it would!)
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