Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Amplifier

github.com

121–130 of 171 posts

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe suddenly many people will have the real problem of paying bills unfortunately

They will, especially when it comes to paying back the VCs all the burnt GenAI-dollars

I thought VCs were investors.

Generally when your investment fails you don’t get paid back, right?

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#123

Project looks interesting, but no demos. As much I want to try it because of all cool concepts mentioned, but I am not sure I want to invest my time if I don't see any demos

I mean that's fair but doing a make install and providing your API key is pretty easy?

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#124

The very first line in the readme is a quote, attributed to "the problem we're solving". That's cute

If you think about it, that's because "the problem we're solving" is running out of time. Once it's solved it won't be able to try out ideas.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#126

I think that letting an LLM run unsupervised on a task is a good way to waste time and tokens. You need to catch them before they stray too far off-path. I stopped using subagents in Claude because I wasn't able to see what they were doing and intervene. Indirectly asking an LLM to prompt another LLM to work on a long, multi-step task doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I think community efforts should go toward mak…

When the task is bigger than I trust the agent to work on it on its own, or for me to review the results, I ask it to create a plan with steps. Then create a md file for each step. I review the steps, and ask the agent to implement the first one. Review that one, fix it, then ask it to update the next steps, and then implement the next one. And so on, until finished.

this plus a reset in between steps usually helps focus context in my experience

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#127

I think that letting an LLM run unsupervised on a task is a good way to waste time and tokens. You need to catch them before they stray too far off-path. I stopped using subagents in Claude because I wasn't able to see what they were doing and intervene. Indirectly asking an LLM to prompt another LLM to work on a long, multi-step task doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I think community efforts should go toward mak…

When the task is bigger than I trust the agent to work on it on its own, or for me to review the results, I ask it to create a plan with steps. Then create a md file for each step. I review the steps, and ask the agent to implement the first one. Review that one, fix it, then ask it to update the next steps, and then implement the next one. And so on, until finished.

Have you tried Scoped context packages? Basically for each task, I create a .md file that includes relevant file paths, the purpose of the task, key dependencies, a clear plan of action, and a test strategy. It’s like a mini local design doc. I found that it helps ground implementation and stabilizes the output of the agents.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the task is bigger than I trust the agent to work on it on its own, or for me to review the results, I ask it to create a plan with steps. Then create a md file for each step. I review the steps, and ask the agent to implement the first one. Review that one, fix it, then ask it to update the next steps, and then implement the next one. And so on, until finished.

Separately, you have to consider that "wasting tokens spinning" might be acceptable if you're able to run hundreds of thousands of these things in parallel. If even a small subset of them translate to value, then you're far net ahead vs with a strictly manual/human process.

> hundreds of thousands of these things in parallel

At what cost,. monetary and environmental?

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the task is bigger than I trust the agent to work on it on its own, or for me to review the results, I ask it to create a plan with steps. Then create a md file for each step. I review the steps, and ask the agent to implement the first one. Review that one, fix it, then ask it to update the next steps, and then implement the next one. And so on, until finished.

Have you tried Scoped context packages? Basically for each task, I create a .md file that includes relevant file paths, the purpose of the task, key dependencies, a clear plan of action, and a test strategy. It’s like a mini local design doc. I found that it helps ground implementation and stabilizes the output of the agents.

I read this suggestion a lot. “Make clear steps, a clear plan of action.” Which I get. But then instead of having an LLM flail away at it could we give to an actual developer? It seems like we’ve finally realized that clear specs makes dev work much easier for LLMs. But the same is true for a human. The human will ask more clarifying questions and not hallucinate. The llm will role the dice and pick a path. Maybe we as devs would just rather talk with machines.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#130
Please comment under this thread if you have actually tried this and can compare it to another tool like Cursor, Codex, raw Claude, etc.

I’m super not interested in hearing what people have to say from a distance without actually using it.

Post reply on HN