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Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

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Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#431
post #19

> Spec-driven development is becoming the primary driver of code generation. This sounds like my current "phase" of AI coding. I have had so many project ideas for years that I can just spec out, everything I've thought about, all the little ideas and details, things I only had time to think about, never implement. I then feed it to Claude, and watch it meet my every specification, I can then test it, note any bugs,…

I am going lower level - every individual work item is a "task.md" file, starts initially as a user ask, then add planning, and then the agent checks gates "[ ]" on each subtask as it works through it. In the end the task files remain part of the project, documenting work done. I also keep an up to date mind map for the whole project to speed up start time. And I use git hooks on the tool event to print the current o…

If you are using claude, in your project's `.claude/settings.json` you can add something like:

```

  "hooks": {
    "PostToolUse": [
      {
        "matcher": "Edit|Write",
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "mix format ${file} 2>/dev/null || true"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "TaskCompleted": [
      {
        "matcher": "",
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "prompt",
            "prompt": "reminder: run mix test if implementation is complete"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "Stop": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "prompt",
            "prompt": "Check if all tasks are complete. If not, respond with {\"ok\": false, \"reason\": \"what remains to be done\"}."
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },

```

Just update it to iterate over your file. It should be a little easier to manage than git hooks and can hammer in testing.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#432

> Checkpoints are a new primitive that automatically captures agent context as first-class, versioned data in Git. When you commit code generated by an agent, Checkpoints capture the full session alongside the commit: the transcript, prompts, files touched, token usage, tool calls and more. This thread is extremely negative - if you can't see the value in this, I don't know what to tell you.

What kind of barrier/moat/network effects/etc would prevent someone with a Claude Code subscription from replicating whatever "innovation" is so uniquely valuable here? It's somewhat strange to regularly read HN threads confidently asserting that the cost of software is trending towards zero and software engineering as a profession is dead, but also that an AI dev tool that basically hooks onto Git/Claude Code/termin…

This comment feels word-for-word the legendary DropBox critique on HN.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#433

> Checkpoints run as a Git-aware CLI. On every commit generated by an agent, it writes a structured checkpoint object and associates it with the commit SHA. The code stays exactly the same, we just add context as first-class metadata. When you push your commit, Checkpoints also pushes this metadata to a separate branch (entire/checkpoints/v1), giving you a complete, append-only audit log inside your repository. As a…

To add to your comment, I think the next logical question is, “then what?” Surely one can’t build a sustainable business storing these records alone.

MCP server with RAG to feed it back to agents when they are working on a piece of code, and bob's your uncle

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#434

> Checkpoints run as a Git-aware CLI. On every commit generated by an agent, it writes a structured checkpoint object and associates it with the commit SHA. The code stays exactly the same, we just add context as first-class metadata. When you push your commit, Checkpoints also pushes this metadata to a separate branch (entire/checkpoints/v1), giving you a complete, append-only audit log inside your repository. As a…

> won't it make just doing a "git checkout" start to be really heavy?

not really? doesn't git checkout only retrieve the current branch? the checkpoint data is in another branch.

we can presume that the tooling for this doesn't expect you to manage the checkpoint branch directly. each checkpoint object is associated with a commit sha (in your working branch, master or whatever). the tooling presumably would just make sure you have the checkpoints for the nearby (in history) commit sha's, and system prompt for the agent will help it do its thing.

i mean all that is trivial. not worth a $60MM investment.

i suspect what is really going on is that the context makes it back to the origin server. this allows _cloud_ agents, independent of your local claude session, to pick up the context. or for developer-to-developer handoff with full context. or to pick up context from a feature branch (as you switch across branches rapidly) later, easily. yes? you'll have to excuse me, i'm not well informed on how LLM coding agents actually work in that way (where the context is kept, how easy it is to pick it back up again). this is just a bit of opining based on why this is worth 20% of $300MM.

if i look at https://chunkhound.github.io it makes me think entire is a version of that. they'll add an MCP server and you won't have to think about it.

finally, because there is a commit sha association for each checkpoint, i would be worried that history rewrites or force pushes MUST use the tooling otherwise you'd end up screwing up the historical context badly.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#435

I had a similar, admitted poorly thought out idea a few months back. I wanted to more or less build Jira for agents and track the context there. If I had to guess 60 million is just enough to build the POC out. I don't see how this can compete though, Open AI or Anthro could easily spin up a competitor internally.

You don't need to build anything. Just tell the agent to write tickets into .md files in a folder and move them to a closed foler as you go along. I've been using Claude Code with the Max plan nonstop essentially every day since last July and since then I've come to realize that the newer people are the more things they think they need to add to CC to get it work well.

Eventually you'll find a way that works for you that needs none of it, and if any piece of all the extras IS ever helpful, Anthropic adds it themselves within a month or two.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#436
post #393

[flagged]

I do not think that's how it worked out for GitHub: I'd rather say that Git (as complex as it was to use) succeeded due to becoming the basis of GitHub (with simple, clean interface). At the time, there were multiple code hosting platforms like Sourceforge, FSF Savannah, Canonical's Launchpad.net, and most development was still done in SVN, with Git, Bazaar, Mercurial the upstart "distributed" VCSes with similar pene…

Yes, development was being done in SVN but it was a huge pain. Continuous communication was required with the server (history lookups took ages, changing a file required a checkout, etc.) and that was just horribly inefficient for distributed teams. Even within Europe, much more so when cross-continent.

A DVCS was definitely required. And I would say git won out due to Linus inventing and then backing it, not because of a platform that would serve it.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#437

> Checkpoints are a new primitive that automatically captures agent context as first-class, versioned data in Git. When you commit code generated by an agent, Checkpoints capture the full session alongside the commit: the transcript, prompts, files touched, token usage, tool calls and more. This thread is extremely negative - if you can't see the value in this, I don't know what to tell you.

For the last three or four months, what I've been doing is anytime I have Claude write a comment on an issue, it just adds a session ID, file path and the VM it is on. That way, whenever we have some stuff that comes up, we just search through issues and then we can also retrace the session that produced the work and it's all traceable. In general, I just work through gitea issues and sometimes beads. I couldn't stand having all these MD files in my repo because I was just drowning in documentation, so having it in issues has been working really nicely and agents know how to work with issues. I did have it write a gitea utility and they are pretty happy using/abusing it. Anytime I see that they call it in some way that generates errors, I just have them improve the utility. And by this point, it pretty much always works. It's been really nice.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#438
post #413
post #393

[flagged]

I'd bet that less people had their source code on git in 2008 than the number of developers using the various coding agents today. And the open-source project that we published today hooks into the existing workflow for those developers, in Claude Code and in Gemini CLI. Time will tell the rest. We will publish regular updates and you can judge us on those results.

At least for me, I have felt like the chat history in an agent is often times just as important and potentially even more important than the source code it generates. The code is merely the compiled result of my explanations of intent and goals. That is, the business logic and domain expertise is trapped in my brain, which isn't very scalable.

Versioning and tracking the true source code, my thoughts, or even the thoughts of other agents and their findings, seems like a logical next step. A hosted central place for it and the infrastructure required to store the immense data created by constantly churning agents that arrive at a certain result seems like the challenge many seem to be missing here.

I wish you the best of luck with your startup.

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#439
post #435

I had a similar, admitted poorly thought out idea a few months back. I wanted to more or less build Jira for agents and track the context there. If I had to guess 60 million is just enough to build the POC out. I don't see how this can compete though, Open AI or Anthro could easily spin up a competitor internally.

You don't need to build anything. Just tell the agent to write tickets into .md files in a folder and move them to a closed foler as you go along. I've been using Claude Code with the Max plan nonstop essentially every day since last July and since then I've come to realize that the newer people are the more things they think they need to add to CC to get it work well. Eventually you'll find a way that works for you…

I'm thinking a customized LLM would write notes in its own hyper compressed language which would allow it to be much much more efficient.

For debugging you could translate it out to English, but if these agents can do stuff without humans in the loop, why do they need to take notes in English?

I can't imagine creating this without hundreds of millions if not billions. I think the future is specialized models

Re: Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

#440
post #393

[flagged]

I do not think that's how it worked out for GitHub: I'd rather say that Git (as complex as it was to use) succeeded due to becoming the basis of GitHub (with simple, clean interface). At the time, there were multiple code hosting platforms like Sourceforge, FSF Savannah, Canonical's Launchpad.net, and most development was still done in SVN, with Git, Bazaar, Mercurial the upstart "distributed" VCSes with similar pene…

and most of those, except maybe gitlab, were clunky AF to use
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