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Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

crates.io

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Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#211

Post by angusturner »

amelius wrote: post #204
mapcars wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see spreading Rust as an overall good thing, because it changes benchmark on how software should feel in terms of performance, stability, memory footprint. So even if it doesn't create tangible advantage in a particular use case - its still good for the whole industry.

No because it means people will use Rust for the wrong reasons. Systems programming is only a tiny fraction of code out there. Approaching every problem as a systems programming problem is a massive waste of resources and intellect.

For small to medium projects, an LLM can write functional (if not well crafted) Rust.

Considering how easy this is now, why choose a heavier, slower and less typesafe language?

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#212

Post by tcfhgj »

gf000 wrote: post #207
mapcars wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see spreading Rust as an overall good thing, because it changes benchmark on how software should feel in terms of performance, stability, memory footprint. So even if it doesn't create tangible advantage in a particular use case - its still good for the whole industry.

How is it any faster than something written in say, Java?

latency and throughput (when with Java the system is crying for more memory while it's chilling in the Rust case)

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#213

Post by tcfhgj »

amelius wrote: post #204
mapcars wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see spreading Rust as an overall good thing, because it changes benchmark on how software should feel in terms of performance, stability, memory footprint. So even if it doesn't create tangible advantage in a particular use case - its still good for the whole industry.

No because it means people will use Rust for the wrong reasons. Systems programming is only a tiny fraction of code out there. Approaching every problem as a systems programming problem is a massive waste of resources and intellect.

it saves a lot of resources - for instance my devices would probably use less than half of the memory it uses now and I wouldn't hear the fan.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#215

Post by aerzen »

gidellav wrote: post #119
aerzen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, what about having tools be discoverable from the environment, similar to how $PATH works in POSIX? There could be an env var $AGENT_TOOLS, a string of paths delimited by `:` and tools would be discovered as some specific format of file. Maybe a JSON that contains tool name, list of parameters and the command to run it. This is essentially decoupling tools from the agent, allowing more customization and per-projec…

I understand the concept, but I don't get what's the advantage over adding in the prompt instructions to use a specific bash command for a specific task, acting as a "custom tool".

Good point. There might be a small advantage if one does not want to give bash access. But general answer to "how do add custom tools like we can in pi" is "you don't". Keep it simple.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#216

Post by whazor »

It says inspired by Pi, but I don't see any extension/plugin possibilities. The best feature of Pi is that an extension can hook anywhere and completely change the behavior. It also allows two extensions to stack on the same hook where there are no conflicts.

I believe Pi extensibility is the most important feature, exactly as how it was important for WordPress. WordPress won because anyone could install it and add the plugins they needed. WordPress also has the same hook system where multiple plugins can build on the same hook.

Companies will want to completely customize their agent harness so it optimally works for their situation.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#217

Post by tcfhgj »

sdevonoes wrote: post #197
tcfhgj wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Reduce the footprint on the planet - prolonged life of hardware - less electricity - less expensive hardware

Compared to what LLMs actually consume, your agent makes zero difference

very wrong - especially on the local machine, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48164613

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#218

Post by regexorcist »

bluegatty wrote: post #74
SatvikBeri wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context window has nothing to do with RAM usage and even if it did, a million tokens of context is maybe 5mb.

'A million tokens of context' is literally Terrabytes of KV cache VRAM on very expensive Nvidia silicon - on the model. On the Agent, yes, the context window does relate to RAM, because the 'entire conversational history' is generally kept in memory. So ballpark 1M 'words' across a bunch of strings. It's not that-that much. Claude Code is not inneficient because 'it's not Rust' - it's just probably not very efficient…

You have a point but it's definitely not TBs for 1M. Should be more like 100G.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#219

Post by karagenit »

GodelNumbering wrote: post #198
arjie wrote: post #111

I had Claude Code build me one of these as well, though I added Dirac's line hashing for edits etc. Also used Rust, and I had this idea that I should use plugins so it can self-edit by implementing in hooks but in the end, I just have it create exhaust information about improvements into a separate file and just update the source code and recompile. The source code is in a fixed place so it can just rewrite and build…

Creator of Dirac here. Glad to see it mentioned and even more glad that you found it useful. I am currently in deep refactor mode to introduce modular tooling to Dirac since the concept of 'fixed' set of tools is starting to feel antiquated, adding tools on demand would be super convenient and a likely replacement for MCP (I understand not all use-cases of it)

Curious how you’re handling prompt caching, as I understand it most LLM providers essentially inject tool definitions in the system prompt, so changing tools dynamically breaks the cache. This has been a big annoyance for me in a separate project; I currently just implemented my own tool-ish system that defines schemas in user messages and instructs the LLM to return matching JSON, but it’s less reliable than using the native tool calling + structured outputs available in the API.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#220

Post by zrg »

whazor wrote: post #216

It says inspired by Pi, but I don't see any extension/plugin possibilities. The best feature of Pi is that an extension can hook anywhere and completely change the behavior. It also allows two extensions to stack on the same hook where there are no conflicts. I believe Pi extensibility is the most important feature, exactly as how it was important for WordPress. WordPress won because anyone could install it and add t…

I'm actually very close to being ready to release exactly that also in rust. I completely agree with your statement, extensibility is the most importnat feature.

https://x.com/PandelisZ/status/2055633346831548902

The two things I want to get right before actually releasing it is properly eval it againt other harnesses and make sure its better.

And the licence. I don't think a GPL licence will yield addoption so I would like to MIT Roder or figure out the right licence

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