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Software for One

ajwaxman.com

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Re: Software for One

#151

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #71
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I played a bunch of music while doing woodworking stuff and asked for more like that. Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. It's not picking random music out of the sky; it's working from my Apple Music library (and then expanding on it from the Apple Music catalog).

> Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. To be fair, they’re also easy (trivial, even) without one. It’s not like “play more music like this” is something we ever needed AI for.

[deleted]

Re: Software for One

#152

Post by tptacek »

spot5010 wrote: post #134
tptacek wrote: post #15

Things I've built in the last month or so: * A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". * A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite. * A macOS menu…

As a new father, just using so many apps sounds exhausting, let alone building and maintaining them. I would have been very excited about these maybe 10-15 years ago. Now I just want the ability to do things with my phone when my hands are tied up holding the baby.

That's an odd response, because fundamentally all I'm doing is making my computer work the way I want it to. It's the opposite of exhausting to me.

Re: Software for One

#153

Post by fuzzfactor »

tptacek wrote: post #56
jedbrooke wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". how is AI (or a human for that matter) supposed to know what “woodworking-appropriate music is”? I had the same thoughts when spotify released their “let AI make a playlist for you”. Like, we…

Because I played a bunch of music while doing woodworking stuff and asked for more like that. Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. It's not picking random music out of the sky; it's working from my Apple Music library (and then expanding on it from the Apple Music catalog).

>I played a bunch of music while doing woodworking stuff and asked for more like that.

I would probably think about doing a little workspace sharing and ask for more live musicians to come in and do some serious woodshedding themselves ;)

I know some that are getting that buzz-saw sound out of their instruments fairly repetitively already, and there's no place to go but up :)

Re: Software for One

#154

Post by tptacek »

ofjcihen wrote: post #149
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People are trying to tell you something that can literally save your life. Colon cancer rates are increasing at a breakneck pace. Chill with the snark for a second and realize you may not be the smartest person in every room.

This is going to be a funny thread to show my doctor. I think something that isn't getting through to people is: I'm not taking The Internet's advice on this stuff; I hired a person to handle these questions for me. Highly recommended!

Re: Software for One

#155

Post by senko »

eviks wrote: post #67
jedbrooke wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". how is AI (or a human for that matter) supposed to know what “woodworking-appropriate music is”? I had the same thoughts when spotify released their “let AI make a playlist for you”. Like, we…

> how is AI (or a human for that matter) supposed to know what “woodworking-appropriate music is”? It doesn't, but you'll believe it is because that's what you asked for. It's not like you have a solid test for what it is yourself

Now, see, when AI does something like this, we call that "hallucination".

Thomas explained what he means in a sibling comment an hour before yours.

Re: Software for One

#156

Post by tptacek »

Ldorigo wrote: post #65
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical (in fact, the modal) line from the database, which goes back to April, is "oyakadon 1/2c rice, 2 thighs, 1/2 breast, 2 eggs, bunch broccolini, std oyakadon broth", and the model works out for itself that these are average-sized thighs and breast (boneless and skinless, because it's oyakadon). "std oyakadon broth" is a reference to a "house recipe", of which there's a side database, each costed by GPT5. Ther…

You can actually get just as good results for packaged food if you just allow the agent to use a web search tool & keep a growing local database of "known food items". I did the same for a while, but it was quite expensive (this was a while back with less powerful models and required a bit of orchestration to make it reliable)

Presumably it would Just Work if I wrote "1/2 bag cool ranch doritos", which is one of the virtues of this input/processing system.

Re: Software for One

#157

Post by tptacek »

nonameiguess wrote: post #114
tptacek wrote: post #15

Things I've built in the last month or so: * A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". * A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite. * A macOS menu…

I feel on the opposite side of a divide when I see these kinds of comments here about people creating bespoke software to address deficiencies they perceive in their daily lives. There's an engineer mindset that tools can solve any and every problem, but do they? Are you quantifiably any fitter than you were before? Better bloodwork, BMI, body fat percentage, anything? Are you creating better wooden goods? More woode…

I am wildly, drastically healthier today than I was when I started this in April. This is something I should have been tracking and measuring a long time ago.

Re: Software for One

#158

Post by ofjcihen »

tptacek wrote: post #154
ofjcihen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are trying to tell you something that can literally save your life. Colon cancer rates are increasing at a breakneck pace. Chill with the snark for a second and realize you may not be the smartest person in every room.

This is going to be a funny thread to show my doctor. I think something that isn't getting through to people is: I'm not taking The Internet's advice on this stuff; I hired a person to handle these questions for me. Highly recommended!

I quite literally, right at this moment, am sitting next to a friend who is a doctor with a focus on nutrition and they are saying that whoever told you that fiber doesn’t matter is going against almost all of the modern understanding of health science and research.

His advice is literally “He needs to just Google it.”

Re: Software for One

#159

Post by kelvinjps10 »

penandledger wrote: post #127

The examples in this thread are all personal-life software (music, calories, thermostats). What I keep wondering about is the other end: the boring business admin that self-employed people carry — invoicing, chasing late payers, expense categorisation, tax set-asides, quoting. That's "software for one" too, except the stakes are money and most people seem to limp along with a spreadsheet plus a shoebox of receipts. I…

I work as an interpreter (independent contractor) and recently built an automation with google sheets and apps script with claude code, funny enough Claude end up being better than anything google offers for their platform.

Basically the agency I work pays every two weeks and the time between I receive an assignment and the the time i get paid for that assignment is about 45minutes.

I built an automation, that when I get a new assignment it automatically adds the assignment to my calendar, to the spreadsheet and it calculates the mileage using google maps API.

Then the spreadsheet calculates how much I’m gonna get in the following 2 paychecks and the one that’s currently running.

Re: Software for One

#160

Post by latexr »

embedding-shape wrote: post #106
latexr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. To be fair, they’re also easy (trivial, even) without one. It’s not like “play more music like this” is something we ever needed AI for.

> It’s not like “play more music like this” is something we ever needed AI for. Borderline off-topic, but I love how fast the goal post moves. A decade or two ago "Similar music to this" was definitively in the realm of AI/ML, now it's some full-stack dev's afternoon to implement.

What are you even talking about? No, of course music recommendation systems had nothing to do with LLMs two decades ago (which is obviously the crux of the discussion), that is insane. And no one has said anything about a “full-stack dev's afternoon”, I’ll kindly ask that you don’t straw man. No goal posts are moving, that fallacy does not mean “argument I don’t like or understand”. What happened to good faith discussion? It’s ever more common on HN that someone will just invent some argument in their head, attack that, then act like they are the arbiter of reason when they couldn’t even understand the argument. That’s not interesting. Engage with what was said.
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