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Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

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Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#131

Post by DeathArrow »

IMO, the problem with Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi is the harness quality and convincing the agents to do the exact things you need, to define workflows and make the agents stick to it. I didn't experience performance issues.

For example I have an agent in Claude Code that has strict rules to do something before implementing every phase in the plan. Sometimes it decides not to do it. "But, wait the feature is simple enough so I can proceed straight to implementation..."

Just because this is written in Rust won't solve the biggest issues most users have with coding agents.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#132

Post by gidellav »

goyozi wrote: post #120

Really neat, I’ll have to try it when I’m at home. Lean, fast tools really make a difference in the coding experience. I’m curious how the prompts idea performs in practice compared to typical skills and subagents. I frequently combine the two to get otherwise tricky workflows done. Say I have a failing build. I invoke my /fix-ci skill (sometimes in the same context I made the code change in), it launches a subagent…

Well... for the most part, you use it like skills, but instead of "commands" you can think of "environments": so '/prompt debug', which is one of the integrated prompts, allows for a debug-focused agent, you can then talk to it as a normal agent, and then '/prompt code' to go back to the standard coding agent.

About subagents: as of right now, the entire agent runs on one context buffer, so it doesn't support subagents in order to keep it lean; but there is a great chance that subagents will be added, as explore-heavy tasks often bloat the context window

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#133

Post by remus »

2001zhaozhao wrote: post #116

Hmm, Claude Code and Opencode work fine for me. It's a bit amusing that coding agents rely on drawing 1000W+ and using 2TB+ of memory in a datacenter to run, yet people really focus on the last few watts and few hundred megabytes of memory on their laptop (which get dwarfed by the energy cost of compiling their code anyways). But I suppose making them a bit faster and lighter wouldn't hurt.

I think this is overly reductive. For sure the models are behemoths and consume a lot of resources, but the harness can have a big impact on how much the model is used. For example, having a strong set of tools available in the harness means the model can work much more efficiently.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#135

Post by post_below »

gidellav wrote: post #132
goyozi wrote: post #120

Really neat, I’ll have to try it when I’m at home. Lean, fast tools really make a difference in the coding experience. I’m curious how the prompts idea performs in practice compared to typical skills and subagents. I frequently combine the two to get otherwise tricky workflows done. Say I have a failing build. I invoke my /fix-ci skill (sometimes in the same context I made the code change in), it launches a subagent…

Well... for the most part, you use it like skills, but instead of "commands" you can think of "environments": so '/prompt debug', which is one of the integrated prompts, allows for a debug-focused agent, you can then talk to it as a normal agent, and then '/prompt code' to go back to the standard coding agent. About subagents: as of right now, the entire agent runs on one context buffer, so it doesn't support subagen…

It sounds like you're saying that /prompt changes the system message part of the session. Doesn't that cause a cache break and result in higher usage/cost?

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#136

Post by marcosscriven »

mohsen1 wrote: post #89

This is much needed! Compared to Codex CLI, Claude Code is insanely slow. $ time claude --version 2.1.143 (Claude Code) ________________________________________________________ Executed in 4.39 secs fish external usr time 29.68 millis 0.26 millis 29.41 millis sys time 71.30 millis 1.30 millis 70.00 millis 5 seconds to show me the version number! I'm guessing Claude Code also needs a rewrite in Rust. But from what I s…

What version of time is giving you that kind of output?

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#137

Post by teo-mateo »

arjie wrote: post #111

I had Claude Code build me one of these as well, though I added Dirac's line hashing for edits etc. Also used Rust, and I had this idea that I should use plugins so it can self-edit by implementing in hooks but in the end, I just have it create exhaust information about improvements into a separate file and just update the source code and recompile. The source code is in a fixed place so it can just rewrite and build…

Is it public on github?

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#138

Post by NewJazz »

remus wrote: post #133
2001zhaozhao wrote: post #116

Hmm, Claude Code and Opencode work fine for me. It's a bit amusing that coding agents rely on drawing 1000W+ and using 2TB+ of memory in a datacenter to run, yet people really focus on the last few watts and few hundred megabytes of memory on their laptop (which get dwarfed by the energy cost of compiling their code anyways). But I suppose making them a bit faster and lighter wouldn't hurt.

I think this is overly reductive. For sure the models are behemoths and consume a lot of resources, but the harness can have a big impact on how much the model is used. For example, having a strong set of tools available in the harness means the model can work much more efficiently.

It is also just an indicator of the planning and polish that a particular harness may have.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#139

Post by NewJazz »

gidellav wrote: post #126
all2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm building an agent framework in golang and it is extremely light weight. Startup time is under 1/2 second, and RAM usage is really low. I have a 12 year old laptop and it happily runs without slowing down. There's no reason what is essentially a string concat engine should be slow on any hardware, including old hardware.

Isn't 2 second startup time a lot? With zerostack, I managed to get it down to ~90ms

They said 1/2 as in 0.5 seconds as in 500 ms.

Re: Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

#140

Post by normie3000 »

teo-mateo wrote: post #137
arjie wrote: post #111

I had Claude Code build me one of these as well, though I added Dirac's line hashing for edits etc. Also used Rust, and I had this idea that I should use plugins so it can self-edit by implementing in hooks but in the end, I just have it create exhaust information about improvements into a separate file and just update the source code and recompile. The source code is in a fixed place so it can just rewrite and build…

Is it public on github?

Yes.
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