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Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#21

Post by thinkingemote »

avilay wrote: post #13

Not being able to enter flow state is a very interesting observation. I've felt it too to the extent that I went down a whole new rabbit hole of what it means to be in flow state. Let me know if anybody here wants to know more, happy to post some links. To answer your question - I discuss the approach with Claude Code (e.g., should I implement my own ACT model in JAX or PyTorch, Python or Rust or Julia, etc.). Then w…

I'd be interested in the rabbit hole of flow state. Also with regards to the dopamine rewards of solving a bug as motivation.

Sometimes using a LLM can assist these and sometimes it can feel like cheating myself out of a good thing and I'm not entirely sure where the borders are. It could also be related to a sense of ownership or pride in ones work and seeing the value in doing quality work.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#23

Post by tolg »

avilay wrote: post #13

Not being able to enter flow state is a very interesting observation. I've felt it too to the extent that I went down a whole new rabbit hole of what it means to be in flow state. Let me know if anybody here wants to know more, happy to post some links. To answer your question - I discuss the approach with Claude Code (e.g., should I implement my own ACT model in JAX or PyTorch, Python or Rust or Julia, etc.). Then w…

I'd love to have some links please :)

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#24

Post by sigmoid10 »

dnikolovv wrote: post #19
integrii wrote: post #17

I am currently in the process of launching my AI teams platform that I've been working on since at least January. It's https://PersonaStack.ai . I'm doing it without VC money and all by myself. I've used over 110B tokens so far building it. You get some amazing results with teams of AIs if you do it right. The key is to control behavior with what integrations and responsibilities each agent has. That way they natural…

Doesn't this go directly against what the author is asking about? You're much less likely to enter flow state if you have a team of AI agents which are supposed to be autonomous.

Maybe project managers will finally get to experience flow states?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#25

Post by fraXis »

integrii wrote: post #17

I am currently in the process of launching my AI teams platform that I've been working on since at least January. It's https://PersonaStack.ai . I'm doing it without VC money and all by myself. I've used over 110B tokens so far building it. You get some amazing results with teams of AIs if you do it right. The key is to control behavior with what integrations and responsibilities each agent has. That way they natural…

Very impressive, especially since you did it solo. The website looks great and explains everything in detail.

Can you elaborate more about its development? How much do 110B tokens equate to in $$$? What LLM did you prefer most during development? Any suggestions for other solo developers trying to launch their LLM-built product?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#27

Post by philbo »

YES!

It's still very wip, I spent a couple of weekends on it so far, but I'm working on a harness that eschews autonomy and instead aims to work as a pair programming partner. Key to that are distinct "driver" and "navigator" modes, with the capacity to flip between them rapidly.

https://gitlab.com/philbooth/opair

(not really usable yet, but after tomorrow's session I expect to be developing opair in opair, which is mildly exciting)

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#28

Post by bob1029 »

I've been working on inverting the control theory for the agent loop. Instead of the user initiating everything, the agent runs automatically in the background and calls the user for feedback as part of tool use. The end game for me is to get rid of the chat interface altogether and move back toward async email and other messaging channels. The chatbot UI as a means of driving the business always felt like a temporary stepping stone / clever demo.

I think there are 10-100x productivity gains lurking in here. It is very expensive for a human to reserialize their mental state into a prompt each time a task needs working on. An agent can do this ~instantly and with high frequency 24/7. The higher the rate of evaluation the less change has to be dealt with between any two iterations. So, the likelihood that a given iteration needs human help goes down as you increase the rate of evaluation per unit of wall clock time. Tighter and faster control loops tend to require less severe corrective measures than slow and sloppy ones.

This is the most plausible reason for so many tokens in the future. I can actually see a million tokens per second making sense. I have a pretty good idea how I'd approach this if I actually had access to this kind of infrastructure. 1Mtok/s is baby tier in terms of raw information theory. The politics of employing a system like this are far more terrifying to me than any technological aspects. Humans really like having control over things, even when that control is pure downside for the business.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#30

Post by just-tom »

I'm building "workboxes" to work on my startup. It helps me develop features insanely fast. A workbox is a simple worktree-in-a-sandbox per feature. I have a simple front end where I can launch new workboxes: I input a prompt (a documented grilling session) and it creates a branch, a PR, and starts an opencode coding session on an e2b sandbox based on a custom template with the app's monorepo. Each workbox has a public https endpoint so I can manually test the web app after the coding session is complete. At any point I can either approve the PR, send a follow-up prompt, or connect to the opencode session for more control.

I think my next step is to perform the grilling session inside the front end, currently I perform it in my terminal and then paste in the front end.

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