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Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

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Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#111

Post by dang »

chme wrote: post #91
dang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a chance to plump for Peter Naur's classic "Programming as Theory Building"! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... What Naur meant by "theory" was the mental model of the original programmers who understood why they wrote it that way. He argued the real program was is theory, not the code. The translation of the theory in…

Even bringing down the "theory" to paper in prosa will be lossy. And natural languages are open to interpretation and a lot of context will remain unmentioned. While programming languages, together with their tested environment, contain the whole context. Instrumenting LLMs will also mean, doing a lot of prompt engineering, which on one hand might make the instructions clearer (for the human reader as well), but on t…

I agree that it will be lossy because all writing is lossy.

Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#112

Post by [deleted] »

chme wrote: post #92
Szpadel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine such support ticket: I used minimax M2 (context it's very unreliable) for installation and it didn't work and my document folder is missing, help how do you even debug this? imagine you some path or behaviour is changed in new os release and model thinks it knows better? if anything goes wrong who is responsible?

Maybe that is a reason for this approach. It changes the responsibility of errors from the person writing that code, to the one executing it. Pretty brilliant in a way.

[deleted]

Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#113

Post by 0o_MrPatrick_o0 »

skeptrune wrote: post #37
0o_MrPatrick_o0 wrote: post #36

Author should explore Ansible/Puppet/Chef. I’m not sure this solution is needed with frontier models.

Can you explain more? I see how those relate to a very limited extent, but I'm not getting your entire vision.

Using IaC tools gives you the following advantages:

1. IaC gives you Idempotent solutions- which is advantageous over an agent. What if the agent crashes half way through deployment procedures? How will you reliably resume an interrupted install?

2. IaC gives you reproducible builds

3. IaC gives you ability to install tools in a way that can be tested for compliance with any deployment standards you have

W/r/t frontier models:

Just tell them to go install stuff. They already have so much in their training corpus that you literally do not need to create this.

7b-14b parameter self hosted models may get some benefit from your approach. I find self hosted is less reliable for tasteful approaches. Micromanagement yields better results.

Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#118

Post by patmorgan23 »

petekoomen wrote: post #52

I'm seeing a lot of negativity in the comments. Here's why I think this is actually a Good Idea. Many command line tools rely on something like this for installation: $ curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash This install script is hundreds of lines long and difficult for a human to audit. You can ask a coding agent to do that for you, but you still need to trust that the authors haven't hidden some nefarious instr…

How is asking an LLM to make some random install script up better than a script designed by the application developer?

The install.sh is auditable, yes you need to know bash to be able to audit it, but the same is true for an LLM, it could hallucinate random commands that delete files or override other applications/configs.

Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#119

Post by patmorgan23 »

roywiggins wrote: post #33
skeptrune wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, removing that line right now. Went too fast and some this copy is definitely low quality :(. Incredibly ironic for me to say that AI needs more supervision while working at the company proposing this haha. Any other feedback you have about the general idea?

I think my preferred version of this would be a hybrid. Keep the regular installer, add a file filled with information that an LLM can use to assist a human if the install script fails for some reason. If the installer was going to succeed in a particular environment anyway, you definitely want to use that instead of an LLM that might sporadically fail for no good reason in that same environment. If the installer fai…

THIS is a good idea and use case. Rather than having every install be what every random commands chatGPT decided to spit out that day.

Re: Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

#120

Post by vrighter »

nobodywillobsrv wrote: post #79
cuu508 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's completely the other way around. Shell scripts can be audited. The average user may not do it due to laziness and/or ignorance, but it is perfectly doable. On the other hand, how do you make sure your LLM, a non-deterministic black box, will not misinterpret the instructions in some freak accident?

How about both worlds? Instead of asking the agent to execute it for you, you ask the agent to write an install.sh based on the install.md? Then you can both audit whatever you want before running or not.

then how about you cut out the llm middleman and just audit the bash scripts already provided?
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