121–130 of 155 posts
Many unix tools already print less logging when used im a script, ie. non-interactively. (I don't know how they detect that.) For example, `ls` has formatting/coloring and `ls | cat` does not. This solution seems like it would fit the problem from the article?
https://man.openbsd.org/man3/ttyname.3
I believe most standard libraries has a version.
All of this because we only have stdout and stderr and nothing in between. I wish there was a stdlog or stddebug or something
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good call. It's a big problem for JSON configs given pure JSON's strict no-comments policy. I like tools that let you use .js or better yet .ts files for config.
A lot of json parsers will permit comments even though it isn't meant to be valid. Worth trying it, see if a comment breaks the config, and if not then use comments and don't worry about it.
Many unix tools already print less logging when used im a script, ie. non-interactively. (I don't know how they detect that.) For example, `ls` has formatting/coloring and `ls | cat` does not. This solution seems like it would fit the problem from the article?
There’s a function isatty that detect if a file descriptor (stdout is one) is associated with a terminal https://man.openbsd.org/man3/ttyname.3 I believe most standard libraries has a version.
if tty -s; then
echo "Standard input is a TTY (interactive mode)."
else
echo "Standard input is not a TTY (e.g., piped or redirected)."
fi
> The environment wins (less tokens burned = less energy consumed) This is understandable logic, but at a systemic level it's not how things always go. Increasing efficiency can lead to increased consumption overall. You might save 50% in energy for your workload, but maybe now you can run it 3 times as much, or maybe 3 times more people will use it, because it's cheaper. The result might be a 50% INCREASE in energy…
Many unix tools already print less logging when used im a script, ie. non-interactively. (I don't know how they detect that.) For example, `ls` has formatting/coloring and `ls | cat` does not. This solution seems like it would fit the problem from the article?
The OS knows (it has to because it set up the pipeline), and the process can find out through a system call, exposed in C as `isatty`: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/isatty.3.html
> This solution seems like it would fit the problem from the article?
Might not be a great idea. The world is probably already full of build tools pipelines that expect to process the normal terminal output (maybe with colours stripped). Environment variables like `CI` are a thing for a reason.
It wouldn't even need to send the full output to make a decision, it could just send "npm run build output 500 lines and succeeded, do we need to read the output?" and based on the rest of the conversation the LLM can respond yes or no.
> Then a brick hits you in the face when it dawns on you that all of our tools are dumping crazy amounts of non-relevant context into stdout thereby polluting your context windows. I've found that letting the agent write its own optimized script for dealing with some things can really help with this. Claude is now forbidden from using `gradlew` directly, and can only use a helper script we made. It clears, recompiles…
Why can't the agent harness dynamically decide whether outputs should be put into the context or not? It could check with an LLM to determine if the verbatim output seems important, and if not, store the full output locally but replace it in the prompt with a brief summary and unique ID. Then make a tool available so the full output can be retrieved later if necessary. That's roughly how humans do it, you scroll thro…
Why can't the agent harness dynamically decide whether outputs should be put into the context or not? It could check with an LLM to determine if the verbatim output seems important, and if not, store the full output locally but replace it in the prompt with a brief summary and unique ID. Then make a tool available so the full output can be retrieved later if necessary. That's roughly how humans do it, you scroll thro…
Isn't that what subagents do to a certain degree?