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Levels of Agentic Engineering

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Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#121

Post by pixl97 »

DrScientist wrote: post #97
antonvs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are all valid, but it doesn’t really change the situation that was being discussed: an AI company trying to enter completely new markets just because they can write software for it is hardly some sort of automatic win. They’re much more likely to fail than succeed. I mentioned sales and marketing but there’s a whole lot more as well. Basically, it involves creating an entire subsidiary. Perhaps the time w…

It does raise the question of where in the future will companies compete. What's the balance going to be between, 'connecting customers to product' and 'making differentiated product'? In theory, if customers have perfect information ( ignoring a very large part of sales is emotional ), then the former part will disappear. However the rise of the internet, and perhaps AI agents shopping on your behalf, hasn't really…

>It does raise the question of where in the future will companies compete.

Exactly where current companies compete, rent seeking, IP control, and legal machinations.

Hence you'll see a few giant lumbering dinosaurs control most of the market, and a few more nimble companies make successful releases until they either get crushed by, get snapped up by the larger companies, or become a large company themselves.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#123

Post by pixl97 »

maxdo wrote: post #78
glhast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a measly level 2er. I'm curious what kind of project truly needs an autonomous agent team Ralph looping out 10,000 LOCs per hour? Seems like harness-maxxing is a competitive pursuit in its own right existing outside the task of delivering software to customers. Feels like K8s cult, overly focused on the cleverness of _how_ something is built versus _what_ is being built.

essentially any enterprise software for example, surprisingly, that needs to be custom tailored and not scaled for millions of views. e.g. anything that has a high context. Youtube's of this world will not enjoy it, they will use rules of scale for billions of users. Every Dashboard Chart, Security review system, Jira, ERP, CRM, LMS, chatbot, you name it. The problem that will win from a customization per smaller uni…

>The level 6 and and 7 is essentially death of enterprise software

Enterprise software that you sell, or enterprise software you use internally?

The amount of self created, self used software in enterprises is staggering, that software will still exist, and still have a massive maintenance cost. So maybe we need a better definition of enterprise software here, like externally sold software? Also a huge amount of that software still has regulatory requirements, so someone will have to sign off on it. Maybe it will be internal certification, but very often there is separation of duties on things like that where it's easier to come from a different company.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#124

Post by Lord-Jobo »

krackers wrote: post #73

What level is copy pasting snippets into the chatgpt window? Grug brained level 0? I sort of prefer it that way (using it as an amped up stackoverflow) since it forces me to decompose things in terms of natural boundaries (manual context management as it were) and allows me to think in terms of "what properties do I need this function to have" rather than just letting copilot take the wheel and glob the entire projec…

1.8: chat ide the slow way :)

This is also where I do most of my AI use. It’s the safe spot where I’m not going to accidentally send proprietary info to an unknown number of eyeballs(computer or human).

It’s also just cumbersome enough that I’m not relying on it too much and stunting my personal ability growth. But I’m way more novice than most on here.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#125

Post by pixl97 »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #100
svstoyanovv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you spend months deeply researching a niche topic. You make your own discoveries, structure your own insights, and feed all of this tightly curated, highly specific context into an LLM. You essentially build a custom knowledge base and train the model on your exact mental framework. Is this fundamentally different from using a ghostwriter, an editor, or a highly advanced compiler? If I am doing the heavy lift…

I would ignore any HN content written by a ghost writer or editor. I guess I would flag compiler output but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing? I’m on the internet for human beings. I already read a newspaper for editors and books for ghostwriters. Not for long though, HN is dying. Just hanging around here waiting for the next thing , I guess…

Sorry man, the internet has died and is not being replaced by anything but an authoritarian nightmare.

My only guess is if you want actual humans, you'll have to do this IRL. Of course we has humans have got used to the 24/7 availability and scale of the internet so this is going to be a problem as these meetings won't provide the hyperactive environment we want.

Any other digital system will be gamed in one way or another.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#127

Post by giancarlostoro »

krackers wrote: post #73

What level is copy pasting snippets into the chatgpt window? Grug brained level 0? I sort of prefer it that way (using it as an amped up stackoverflow) since it forces me to decompose things in terms of natural boundaries (manual context management as it were) and allows me to think in terms of "what properties do I need this function to have" rather than just letting copilot take the wheel and glob the entire projec…

I think you bring up a good point, it falls under Chat IDE, but its the "lowest" tier if you will. Nothing wrong with it, a LOT of us started this way.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#129

Post by sveme »

elpakal wrote: post #126
patchnull wrote: post #122

[flagged]

> file-based state that persists between agent invocations Can you expand on this with a practical example?

One example: I let the agent culminate the essence of all previous discussions into a spec.md file, check it for completeness, and remove all previous context before continuing.

Re: Levels of Agentic Engineering

#130

Post by fudfomo »

elpakal wrote: post #126
patchnull wrote: post #122

[flagged]

> file-based state that persists between agent invocations Can you expand on this with a practical example?

It needs a canonical source of truth, something isolated agents can't provide easily. There are tools out there like specularis that help you do that and keep specs in sync.
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