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Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

simonwillison.net

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Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#2

Post by eliben »

Very interesting! I encountered the problems these tools are trying to tackle just recently while trying to guide an agent into creating an in-browser tool for me. Closing the loop on a web interface isn't as simple as CLI-only tools. I should give this a try.

It's also interesting that you've shifted to Go for your agent-coded CLI tools, Simon.

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#3

Post by saberience »

Sounds like both of these tools could be one shot by either Claude or Codex.

Or alternatively, just be a skill versus a tool.

My “agents” already demo stuff all the time by just being prompted to do so. I have notations in my standard Agents.md for how I want my documentation, testing etc.

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#4

Post by simonw »

eliben wrote: post #2

Very interesting! I encountered the problems these tools are trying to tackle just recently while trying to guide an agent into creating an in-browser tool for me. Closing the loop on a web interface isn't as simple as CLI-only tools. I should give this a try. It's also interesting that you've shifted to Go for your agent-coded CLI tools, Simon.

I'm dabbling with Go at the moment for small tools, mainly as an excuse to learn a new language but also because having a single standalone binary is convenient for shuttling these tiny little tools around.

... but then I'm mostly running them with "uvx name-of-tool" because it turns out Python's packaging infrastructure for binary tools is so good!

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#5

Post by simonw »

saberience wrote: post #3

Sounds like both of these tools could be one shot by either Claude or Codex. Or alternatively, just be a skill versus a tool. My “agents” already demo stuff all the time by just being prompted to do so. I have notations in my standard Agents.md for how I want my documentation, testing etc.

They kind of were one-shotted by Claude. The value is in coming up with a consistent design and good enough --help that you can prompt:

  Run uvx showboat --help and
  uvx rodney --help and use those
  tools to demo the feature you built
The help text effectively doubles as a skill.

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#6

Post by tardismechanic »

See also (the confusingly named) playwright-cli

https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli

Different from the cli used for running tests etc that comes bundled with PlayWright

Sample use:

  playwright-cli open https://demo.playwright.dev/todomvc/ --headed
  playwright-cli type "Buy groceries"
  playwright-cli press Enter
  playwright-cli type "Water flowers"
  playwright-cli press Enter
  playwright-cli check e21
  playwright-cli check e35
  playwright-cli screenshot

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#7

Post by simonw »

tardismechanic wrote: post #6

See also (the confusingly named) playwright-cli https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli Different from the cli used for running tests etc that comes bundled with PlayWright Sample use: playwright-cli open https://demo.playwright.dev/todomvc/ --headed playwright-cli type "Buy groceries" playwright-cli press Enter playwright-cli type "Water flowers" playwright-cli press Enter playwright-cli check e21 playwright-cli…

Yeah that's an excellent option for this kind of thing too.

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#9

Post by toastal »

If agents can generate text so easily, why would they be limited to Markdown instead of reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, or LaTeX which have rich features that help users understand text? I can understand developers refusing to adopt proper formats for documentation, but this seems odd for the bots. It doesn’t even generate the correct syntax block in Markdown using “bash” instead of “sh-session”.

Re: Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built

#10

Post by markusw »

simonw wrote: post #4
eliben wrote: post #2

Very interesting! I encountered the problems these tools are trying to tackle just recently while trying to guide an agent into creating an in-browser tool for me. Closing the loop on a web interface isn't as simple as CLI-only tools. I should give this a try. It's also interesting that you've shifted to Go for your agent-coded CLI tools, Simon.

I'm dabbling with Go at the moment for small tools, mainly as an excuse to learn a new language but also because having a single standalone binary is convenient for shuttling these tiny little tools around. ... but then I'm mostly running them with "uvx name-of-tool" because it turns out Python's packaging infrastructure for binary tools is so good!

If you're coming from the Python world, definitely. I find `go install github.com/simonw/rodney@latest` equally easy. :D Although you need the Go tooling installed, of course. But so much agree, Go is great for CLIs!
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