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Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

chenxiachan.github.io

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Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#31

Post by angoragoats »

worldthruword wrote: post #28
angoragoats wrote: post #26

See also this post (“Every Fucking Website, Slop edition”): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49302737

Analogy: Textual version of Material Design from Google. Standardization in important information rich environment is good. Standardization for art is not good. We should not mix these two distinct scenarios. Or maybe I am old.

> Analogy: Textual version of Material Design from Google.

What? The post I linked to is talking about the layout and appearance of the page, in addition to a few textual elements.

> Standardization in important information rich environment is good.

Why is this good in general? And specifically, how is standardizing on e.g. a meaningless status indicator (that doesn't really indicate the status of anything) "good"?

Besides, this is not standardization, it's statistical models (LLMs) converging on a design for arbitrary and likely inscrutable reasons, without understanding the meaning or purpose behind design.

Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#32

Post by chatchan »

esperent wrote: post #7
urvader wrote: post #3

What about cache? When you change the context the prefill stage will be much slower?

That's always going to be a trade off with anything like this so I guess it's better to think of it as an alternative to compaction. Another use case that comes to mind is that sometimes I'll include some detail early in a conversation and I mean it as incidentals information but the AI fixates on it. If I could selectively edit that out rather than start a whole new conversation it would be worth the cache miss.

Yes, that is exactly the failure mode I care about and drove me to develop ThoughtDAG!

In ThoughtDAG, removing that edge excludes the detail from the next request without deleting the original branch. Thinking of this as user-directed compaction is a useful framing.

Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#34

Post by [deleted] »

fractorial wrote: post #29
embedding-shape wrote: post #13

This seems like a really interesting idea and something I've basically been doing myself manually so far, with a DESIGN.md document with "one concept/decision per line, built in a tree" basically, where all decisions that needs to be remembered gets noted down for future reference. Not a fan of ThoughtDAG being a complete separate application rather than built into the tools I use every day, like my text editor or ot…

Irrespective of opinions about a project or its authors, disclosing a potential security issue in a public forum is markedly not responsible disclosure.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#35

Post by chatchan »

esperent wrote: post #8

The basic idea here looks interesting and is easy to understand but what I'm not understanding is why it's a standalone app. Is this supposed to replace e.g. Claude desktop? Or can it plug in to other systems like Claude Code, Codex, Pi? I don't think I'd want to use it as a standalone app but I would certainly be interested in it as a plugin.

Thank you for your feedback!

Just want to know. What would be the smallest useful integration for you: allowing the host tool to read the currently selected context, or bidirectional access so it can also create, branch, and prune nodes?

Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#37

Post by chatchan »

fractorial wrote: post #29
embedding-shape wrote: post #13

This seems like a really interesting idea and something I've basically been doing myself manually so far, with a DESIGN.md document with "one concept/decision per line, built in a tree" basically, where all decisions that needs to be remembered gets noted down for future reference. Not a fan of ThoughtDAG being a complete separate application rather than built into the tools I use every day, like my text editor or ot…

Irrespective of opinions about a project or its authors, disclosing a potential security issue in a public forum is markedly not responsible disclosure.

Thank you for taking the time to inspect this so carefully. You were right, and I treated it as an urgent security issue. The updated version fixed the mentioned problem. All macOS, Windows, and Linux packages have been rebuilt.

I also agree with your broader product criticism. If you are still willing to try the patched release, I would genuinely value both a security re-check and your thoughts on what the smallest useful editor integration should look like. Thank you again for catching this before more people installed it.

Re: Show HN: ThoughtDAG – An editable context graph for LLM conversations

#39

Post by chatchan »

mikeebener wrote: post #30

I looked at the repo and demo canvas. Nice work. Especially liked the 3 semantic zoom tiers and the weave/condense features. If you're enabling for less-technical users consider leading with weave and condense vs. edge deletion. Edge deletion is where the model is powerful but my Mom would get stuck there for instance. The idea that removing a wire changes what the model actually sees might not be obvious. Consider w…

Thank you for carefully reviewing the repo and demo; this suggestion is very insightful. Currently, the node sidebar already has a context list grouped by material, reference, and dialogue, but it's collapsed by default and doesn't directly exclude content. Your suggestion to "make the list an explanatory layer" perfectly points out the missing element.

I also agree that Weave and Condense are easier for new users to understand than simply removing connections. The diagram can continue to serve as the underlying structure, while the sidebar answers the question more intuitively: "What content will be used in this answer?"

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