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An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

thebeach.dev

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Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#11

Post by jstanley »

pama wrote: post #3
hankbond wrote: post #2

Maybe this is a reductive comment, but how does this differ from just letting your agent bash tool a `python -c` command (or anything of that class)? I'm not really getting where this is a "wow" moment? It is always nice to appreciate how much power you get out of (Model + the absolute bare minimum of control flow). There is just so much baked into the models now that given an inch they will take a mile.

The blog is about writing an agent when you dont already have an agent, but only a plain LLM. It stitches the minimal pieces together. Agents dont need lots of supporting infra, so it is good to keep the code concise. Not a wow moment for sure, though some people think that agents and harnesses are complicated.

Right but given that the agent only outputs text, and agents are perfectly happy writing python, the supposed benefit of Lisp is completely irrelevant here.

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#13

Post by hack1312 »

lgas wrote: post #12
emp17344 wrote: post #6

Littered with AI writing tells.

This doesn't need to be posted on every post. Everyone that cares is well aware. It's like saying "this was written in english" on every post.

Why should I bother reading something that the “author” couldn’t even be bothered to write themselves?

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#14

Post by lgas »

hack1312 wrote: post #13
lgas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't need to be posted on every post. Everyone that cares is well aware. It's like saying "this was written in english" on every post.

Why should I bother reading something that the “author” couldn’t even be bothered to write themselves?

I'm not saying you should, I'm saying you shouldn't clutter up every thread with this type of useless comment. It just detracts from the people that do want to engage with it.

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#15

Post by pseudony »

hack1312 wrote: post #13
lgas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't need to be posted on every post. Everyone that cares is well aware. It's like saying "this was written in english" on every post.

Why should I bother reading something that the “author” couldn’t even be bothered to write themselves?

Similarly, why should I be bothered reading this kind of comment in each and every discussion thread?

What does it contribute? I can read and discern this for myself, I can then stop reading or decide I don’t care.

Seriously, at some point all you “ai writing sleuths” should just get your own discussion thread together. It’s been months of this , we get it already.

(Not directly just at you, but anyone who feels the need to drop these comments in every thread)

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#16

Post by kmeaw »

hankbond wrote: post #2

Maybe this is a reductive comment, but how does this differ from just letting your agent bash tool a `python -c` command (or anything of that class)? I'm not really getting where this is a "wow" moment? It is always nice to appreciate how much power you get out of (Model + the absolute bare minimum of control flow). There is just so much baked into the models now that given an inch they will take a mile.

If you give your agent a `bash` or `python -c` tool, it starts a separate process that produces some output and then exits. After that, only the output and the exit code are available.

In contrast, `eval` runs the code in the same execution context as the agent loop. When `eval` finishes, that execution context still exists. For example, any functions defined during an `eval` call remain available for later use.

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#18

Post by josefrichter »

emp17344 wrote: post #6

Littered with AI writing tells.

is that wrong though? you write all your code with AI already, but you still need to supervise and steer it. same with blog posts - as long as you steer it towards converying your point, it doesn't matter the text itself was written by AI rather than typed by you, does it?

Re: An agent in 100 lines of Lisp

#19

Post by vikramkr »

kmeaw wrote: post #16
hankbond wrote: post #2

Maybe this is a reductive comment, but how does this differ from just letting your agent bash tool a `python -c` command (or anything of that class)? I'm not really getting where this is a "wow" moment? It is always nice to appreciate how much power you get out of (Model + the absolute bare minimum of control flow). There is just so much baked into the models now that given an inch they will take a mile.

If you give your agent a `bash` or `python -c` tool, it starts a separate process that produces some output and then exits. After that, only the output and the exit code are available. In contrast, `eval` runs the code in the same execution context as the agent loop. When `eval` finishes, that execution context still exists. For example, any functions defined during an `eval` call remain available for later use.

That's technically true but practically an agent can just save the script file/rerun it/write a tool that lets it call a reply with memory etc.This aspect is a bit more elegant when it's in the execution context, but the core of "you don't need to predefine tools, the agent can dynamically write its own code" is not exactly new - that's pretty much the basis of why Claude code and codex and all the other agent harnesses are so much more effective than old ways if working with llms - they can just write giant incomprehensible bash scripts on the fly to accomplish random things without having pre-defined tools, write state to files, etc
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