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The Harness Is the Thing

scott-fryxell.github.io

131–136 of 136 posts

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#131
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to do so. Probably not something a lot of folks here would find interesting, but I'm easy to contact, from my Web sites. People here, often do that. Basically, my needs are different from others. I'm not working on the next NORAD upgrade, much of my work is open, and the more ChatGPT knows about me, and the app I'm designing, the better. One reason I chose it, was because of this "memory." TL;DR: I feed it just…

When using LLM's to help write things like tutorials, how do you reduce the verbosity firehose? Even though I use MD/skills and other methods, I have remind models that they are not paid by the word multiple times a day.

Oh, I don't really do much more than have feedback loops, where I review the output, then ask for things like less verbosity, or a lower-level vocabulary, etc. I like to apply this at each application, rather than make a blanket rule, as each page may have a different audience.

For example, I have made a tutorial, which is meant to be a "quick reference," from within the app (Use Safari to view the page), but I am also developing a "walkthrough," to show possible funders (we're an NPO). The walkthrough is a higher-level vocabulary than the tutorial. The LLM deals with stuff like making sure to keep the glossary consistent, etc., but I like to have the final say on the output.

I'm pretty sure that I can force the LLM to use certain levels of vocabulary, through the .md file that describes the default setup, but choose not to do it.

I am still in that "trust, but verify" stage of my relationship with LLMs.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#132
post #3

Reading this really makes me wish that I had a slightly better workflow. I'm really soley dependent of Fable to the point that I don't use other models, and I've already sort of hit a point where I'm running into usage limits every week. I am really living on borrowed time — when Anthropic finally collapses their 50% usage increase at the end of August, I'll definitely be forced to switch my workflow. When that happe…

Keep Fable, but have it orchestrate other agents running different models (could be Opus, Grok or Kimi K3).

This is my current workflow: https://x.com/sridca/status/2093354491965735091

I even let Fable choose the appropriate model for the task.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is easily solved. "Check that the blog looks the same in XYZ browsers". I have LLMs align stuff for me all the time because I'm too lazy. It takes the screenshot, changes the code, code auto reloads and boom, done.

Yes, something like this is a good skill for me to add to the critic phase. This is my first post with the blog redesign, and I will admit I am 100% using hacker news as QA. Excellent feedback, Thank you.

please upvote then, people are downvoting because they don't like that it works.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#134
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is easily solved. "Check that the blog looks the same in XYZ browsers". I have LLMs align stuff for me all the time because I'm too lazy. It takes the screenshot, changes the code, code auto reloads and boom, done.

Sure. However I have a strange feeling when I read all AI praises and how productive everyone is while seeing more and more broken things everywhere. Sometimes from the same very productive people. Otherwise we might have said that maybe broken stuff goes from AI-deniers. If everyone is doing the job of hundreds, extremely productive and everything is so easily fixed, why everything feels so slow and broken, even so…

I think what you're seeing is A LOT of moving fast that wasn't possible before. When you move fast, you break things.

Where it would take 6 hours to make a first cut of a static site, you can now do that in 15 minutes. Obviously that's not going to be perfect.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#135
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree (except the Sonnet bit, yes, it's degrading). "then the cost of executing that plan is a just one turn more of cached tokens, and minimal time." This is just not true at all. There's a huge gap between 'figured out the hard stuff' and 'rock solid'. Dependencies, integration, corner cases, docs, testing, unforeseen issues, a lot of back and forth auditing making sure things are really tight. Audits…

I'm sorry, but just because you achieve results you consider acceptable with this method doesn't mean everyone does. I don't work where we can ship slop. I don't work where PRs can be merged based on what the agents say. I work where a human has to read and approve and own every single line of code. I work where the stakes are actually high, so the cost of not using the best tools in terms of human time are big. A si…

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Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#136
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree (except the Sonnet bit, yes, it's degrading). "then the cost of executing that plan is a just one turn more of cached tokens, and minimal time." This is just not true at all. There's a huge gap between 'figured out the hard stuff' and 'rock solid'. Dependencies, integration, corner cases, docs, testing, unforeseen issues, a lot of back and forth auditing making sure things are really tight. Audits…

I'm sorry, but just because you achieve results you consider acceptable with this method doesn't mean everyone does. I don't work where we can ship slop. I don't work where PRs can be merged based on what the agents say. I work where a human has to read and approve and own every single line of code. I work where the stakes are actually high, so the cost of not using the best tools in terms of human time are big. A si…

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