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Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

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Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#11

Post by nusl »

I have an llm agent with a harness that stores/logs everything in a structured manner to local files and/or sqlite. This then turns more into casual conversation type stuff. Send it test results, talk about stuff, give it updates, etc, and it handles the rest. Querying the data is pretty straight-forward without the agent since it's plaintext/sqlite. I tried random tools over time but sorta fell out of them. This is kinda the only thing that's stuck.

Could take this further and make it better with structured tooling. Some sorta CLI perhaps, or an API, that the agent knows how to use, then can build a frontend on top or something. For now this works okay.

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#12

Post by ncr100 »

nusl wrote: post #11

I have an llm agent with a harness that stores/logs everything in a structured manner to local files and/or sqlite. This then turns more into casual conversation type stuff. Send it test results, talk about stuff, give it updates, etc, and it handles the rest. Querying the data is pretty straight-forward without the agent since it's plaintext/sqlite. I tried random tools over time but sorta fell out of them. This is…

So like a voice capture system, then just feed all that as raw data into an agent?

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#13

Post by ghostly_s »

arionhardison wrote: post #4

The reason these things did not work for me is because they were things I had to "do" as in remember/initiate so I made Crohn's AI - because its a program that runs and I just have to reply or answer when the AI-GIs contact me. Intent: https://wiki.crohns.ai/agent/posts/ibd-biologic-therapy-init... Program: https://crohns.ai/program/71174-eim-joint-pain-flare Protocol: https://crohns.ai/protocol/71174 This allowed me…

You're operating a third-party Medicare guide at "medicare.dev" with no visible disclaimer anywhere that you are not affiliated with Medicare?

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#14

Post by FranklinMaillot »

I'm not sure what you want to track but I'd recommend becoming a stationary nerd . Experiment with different notebooks, paper quality, try fountain pens, pencils, pastels... Pick the combination that brings you joy. If you find pleasure in the tactile act of putting ink (or graphite) on paper, you'll never want to quit journaling. Believe me.

I'm only half joking. Physical, handmade artefacts beat everything else, and will outlive whatever tracking app is currently trending.

Start on YT and go down the rabbit hole.

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#15

Post by nusl »

ncr100 wrote: post #12
nusl wrote: post #11

I have an llm agent with a harness that stores/logs everything in a structured manner to local files and/or sqlite. This then turns more into casual conversation type stuff. Send it test results, talk about stuff, give it updates, etc, and it handles the rest. Querying the data is pretty straight-forward without the agent since it's plaintext/sqlite. I tried random tools over time but sorta fell out of them. This is…

So like a voice capture system, then just feed all that as raw data into an agent?

Suppose you could use voice too, yeah. I built a k8s-based sandbox environment. One pod = one agent, and then a bunch of scaffolding around that to manage it and stuff. "Agent" here is a Claude Code instance within a pod with root access to do whatever it wants inside the pod. The main interface is Discord, but it supports other interfaces/frontends. 1 agent = 1 pod = 1 discord channel, managed by the harness. It can do other stuff too, like spawn its own pods and namespaces to build and host its own infra, new agent teams/sub-teams, but unrelated.

I mostly use text to talk to it, and send files via the Discord file sharing mechanism. Discord has voice recordings too, which are sent as .ogg files, which the agents then turn into text with Whisper.

Not quite plain Claude Code but I didn't want to go into too much depth in my original message.

The end result though is a persistent data store for each pod/agent, and then I can talk to them whenever I want from wherever I want, and interact with it with proper media support and stuff. So I have one agent that's for medical logs and such, and others for various other things.

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#16

Post by arionhardison »

ghostly_s wrote: post #13
arionhardison wrote: post #4

The reason these things did not work for me is because they were things I had to "do" as in remember/initiate so I made Crohn's AI - because its a program that runs and I just have to reply or answer when the AI-GIs contact me. Intent: https://wiki.crohns.ai/agent/posts/ibd-biologic-therapy-init... Program: https://crohns.ai/program/71174-eim-joint-pain-flare Protocol: https://crohns.ai/protocol/71174 This allowed me…

You're operating a third-party Medicare guide at "medicare.dev" with no visible disclaimer anywhere that you are not affiliated with Medicare?

No, its not a guide and there are disclaims literally everywhere. As long as you don't use the gov bar (at top of all gov websites) its OK. I work w/ people from CMS daily.

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#17

Post by koliber »

I don't know anything about tracking your particular illness, but I have tried tracking various things in my life with varying success. Many times I've failed, but then I tried again in different ways. One thing that I noticed is that too often I would try to track too much too rigorously. It would become a burden, I would lose motivation, and I would stop.

For some things, I decided to find a way to do the minimum amount of tracking that is sustainable. One example is fitness. I tried keeping a detailed track of the kinds of exercise I do. I realized it is too much of a burden. So instead, I opted for just noting in my journal whether I did any exercise at all. And it worked. And I realized that I have capacity for more so I started marking whether I did too little, just enough, or a lot. And that was sustainable. And then I built it up some more and for one particular type of exercise, and now I track it thoroughly, while only noting the others. This is now a habit and it seems to have stuck.

So instead of starting with a thorough way of tracking something, start with a minimal way of noting and build up from there.

Re: Ask HN: I've quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

#18

Post by spamlord »

ghostly_s wrote: post #13
arionhardison wrote: post #4

The reason these things did not work for me is because they were things I had to "do" as in remember/initiate so I made Crohn's AI - because its a program that runs and I just have to reply or answer when the AI-GIs contact me. Intent: https://wiki.crohns.ai/agent/posts/ibd-biologic-therapy-init... Program: https://crohns.ai/program/71174-eim-joint-pain-flare Protocol: https://crohns.ai/protocol/71174 This allowed me…

You're operating a third-party Medicare guide at "medicare.dev" with no visible disclaimer anywhere that you are not affiliated with Medicare?

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