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Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

reflex.dev

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Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#21

Post by ceejayoz »

faangguyindia wrote: post #20

I saw Codex was screenshotting, then clicking around. I just stopped it and never used that again. Using CLI tools is much faster and token-efficient. I developed ten apps in the last two months. One reached 10,000+ monthly active users. I ask Codex to generate SVG line by line and backtrack edit, ask it to use Inkscape to generate icons, etc... I developed all this on $20 codex sub.

Claude does this too, with the Chrome extension.

It breaks like 80% of the time for me, and it's incredibly slow. Having it use Playwright (bonus: can test in FF/Saf too) was a big improvement.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#22

Post by QuercusMax »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

Lots of apps actually do have all their functionality exposable via an API - but it's an internal API that's hidden from the user.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#23

Post by planb »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

This will not happen. None of the existing apps people use daily on their phones have any incentive to support this. Social media wants the people to doomscroll, shopping apps and booking sites want to use their own dark patterns to make people believe they get a special discount if they buy _now_ and everything else just wants users to see the ads. Why on earth would they offer convenient hooks for AI chatbots?

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#24

Post by palashawas »

moralestapia wrote: post #11

This is obvious. The problem is that not everything has an API, while everything has a human-oriented UI.

Right - we did this benchmark because we launched a plugin that makes APIs programmatically from an app's human-oriented UI (from the event handlers, to be specific). So any app that has a human-oriented UI now has an API.

The benchmark is a more generally interesting part of the launch materials, so I figured it had its own separate home here.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#25

Post by embedding-shape »

faangguyindia wrote: post #20

I saw Codex was screenshotting, then clicking around. I just stopped it and never used that again. Using CLI tools is much faster and token-efficient. I developed ten apps in the last two months. One reached 10,000+ monthly active users. I ask Codex to generate SVG line by line and backtrack edit, ask it to use Inkscape to generate icons, etc... I developed all this on $20 codex sub.

I think it's the third or forth time I see you bragging about HN how many apps you're able to develop with AI now. Care to link any of them, especially where we can see the actual code that you've produced here? Without being able to see actual results, I'm not sure what you want people to take away from your repeated comments.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#26

Post by throwaway27448 »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

We have a much better chance of an ai-addressable Harmony OS version than of OpenAI making a serious competitor.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#27

Post by dummydummy1234 »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

Why not use the same acc disability features?

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#29

Post by CodingJeebus »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

One of the most seductive (and destructive) forces in software is the desire to rewrite from scratch because rewrites never, ever, ever go as planned. With AI, we're now thinking it's a good idea to rewrite the entire platform from the ground-up. Wild.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#30

Post by dist-epoch »

aurareturn wrote: post #8

In an agentic world, the OS needs to be completely rethought. For example, every single app functionality should be exposable via an API while remaining human friendly. I think OpenAI designing their own phone is the next logical step. I hope they succeed which should bring major competition to Apple and Android.

The future is "dark OSs" - OSes with no human users.
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