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"In this post, I’ll cover a third, not-so-obvious approach: building ways for the agent to validate more of its own work before a human has to step in. " this has been an obvious thing to do since at least January (since Geoffrey Huntley published "everything is a ralph loop"), and this is how I've been working: build enough orchestration tooling to be able to automate everything: development container bringup, build…
Isn't this a bit of an incorrect usage of the term "backpressure"? OP quoted the correct definition right at the start: > In systems engineering, backpressure is the mechanism by which a downstream component signals upstream that it can't accept more work (the "downstream component" being the human reviewer in this case) But the measures they propose don't actually do that. They are more like fixed throttle elements…
It is an incorrect use of what was already a flawed metaphor. Pressure is isotropic. Directed pressure makes no sense, like all other fluid analogies in unrelated fields of engineering.
Isn't this a bit of an incorrect usage of the term "backpressure"? OP quoted the correct definition right at the start: > In systems engineering, backpressure is the mechanism by which a downstream component signals upstream that it can't accept more work (the "downstream component" being the human reviewer in this case) But the measures they propose don't actually do that. They are more like fixed throttle elements…
Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term. It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.
"In this post, I’ll cover a third, not-so-obvious approach: building ways for the agent to validate more of its own work before a human has to step in. " this has been an obvious thing to do since at least January (since Geoffrey Huntley published "everything is a ralph loop"), and this is how I've been working: build enough orchestration tooling to be able to automate everything: development container bringup, build…
What license do you use then?
The three main problems are 1) API usage is deadly expensive 2) Claude is about to make all automation very expensive 3) all the flows where a model has the initiative are strictly biased towards unwarranted stops (checkpointing).
Also, I won't call that "backpressure", there is no producer-consumer disbalance or something similar. From what I can see, the author just proposes a structured feedback loop. That's a discussion about organizational principles for system which consist of multiple unreliable but very complex components and this "backpressure" is just one of the aspects. Personally I find the viable system model framework productive as both a mental model and literal implementation guideline.
Lesser problem is that agent SDKs are bad and building a custom harness is hard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term. It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.
lol your comment sounds like a Claude apology
A very long post about a simple and very obvious idea with many different implementations. The three main problems are 1) API usage is deadly expensive 2) Claude is about to make all automation very expensive 3) all the flows where a model has the initiative are strictly biased towards unwarranted stops (checkpointing). Also, I won't call that "backpressure", there is no producer-consumer disbalance or something simi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term. It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.
lol your comment sounds like a Claude apology
A very long post about a simple and very obvious idea with many different implementations. The three main problems are 1) API usage is deadly expensive 2) Claude is about to make all automation very expensive 3) all the flows where a model has the initiative are strictly biased towards unwarranted stops (checkpointing). Also, I won't call that "backpressure", there is no producer-consumer disbalance or something simi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_pressure
You can't express orchestration in terms of "backpressure" only, I think.
Implement-Review-Repeat loop does not involve backpressure in the strict meaning of the term.