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Microsoft Amplifier

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Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#161

Post by payneio »

Hey all! I'm one of a handful of developers on this project. Great to see it's getting some interest!

For context, we are right in the middle of building this thing... multiple rebuilds daily since we are using it to build itself. The value isn't in the code itself, yet, but in the approaches (UNIX philosophy, meta-cognitive recipes, etc.)

We are really excited about how productive these approaches are even in this early stage. We are able to have amplifier go off make significant progress unattended for sometimes hours at a time. This, of course, raises a lot of questions on how software will be built in the near future... questions which we are leaning into.

Most of our team's projects, unless they have some unresolved IP or are using internal-only systems, are built in the open. This is a research project at this stage. We recognize this approach it too expensive and too hacky for most independent developers (we're spending thousands of dollars daily on tokens). But once the patterns are identified, we expect we'll all find ways to make them more accessible.

The whole point of this is to experiment and learn fast.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#162

Post by nozzlegear »

username223 wrote: post #154
nozzlegear wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very altruistic outlook on Microsoft's intent with getting everyone to use and depend on AI.

I mean this in the best possible way, but I don't think you're using "altruistic" correctly. Altruism is "showing a selfless concern for the well-being of others." I think you're looking for "naive," and Microsoft is some combination of cynical and manipulative.

Good point, thanks! I meant to say that they were taking an outlook that cast Microsoft's intentions as altruistic when (in my view) the intentions are more along the lines of cynical and manipulative, as you said.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#163

Post by payneio »

ripped_britches wrote: post #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.

I've tried it. It works better than raw Claude. We're working on benchmarks now. But... it's a moving target as amplifier (an experimental project) is evolving rapidly.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#164

Post by paradox921 »

Hi all, I'm the primary author/lead on the "research exploration" that is Amplifier at Microsoft. It's still SUPER early and we're running fast and applying learnings from the past couple of years in new ways to explore some new value we're finding early evidence of. I apologize that the repo is in a very rough condition, we're running very fast and most of what is in there now has been very helpful but will very soon be completely replaced with our next major iteration of it as we continue to run ahead. I did want to take a pause today and put together a blog post to capture a little more context for those of you here who are following along:

https://paradox921.medium.com/amplifier-notes-from-an-experi...

For those who find it useful in this very early stage, to find some value for yourself in either using it or learning from it, happy to be on the journey together. For those who don't like it or don't understand why or what we're doing, I apologize again, it's definitely not for everyone at this stage, if ever, so no offense taken.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#165

Post by awy311 »

rco8786 wrote: post #29

A lot of snark in these comments. Has anyone actually tried it yet?

Claude Code is great, this is just a set of tweaks, not really "research". For anyone into vibe coding, there are dozens of interesting video tutorials on customizing Claude Code and running practical jobs, not limited to coding.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#166

Post by payneio »

payneio wrote: post #161

Hey all! I'm one of a handful of developers on this project. Great to see it's getting some interest! For context, we are right in the middle of building this thing... multiple rebuilds daily since we are using it to build itself. The value isn't in the code itself, yet, but in the approaches (UNIX philosophy, meta-cognitive recipes, etc.) We are really excited about how productive these approaches are even in this e…

Here's a writeup of the project for more context: https://paradox921.medium.com/amplifier-notes-from-an-experi...

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#167

Post by theshrike79 »

nightshift1 wrote: post #69

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…

There are two opposite ways to do this.

Codex is like an external consultant. You give it specs and it quietly putters away and only stops when the feature is done.

Claude is built more like a pair programmer, it displays changes live, "talks" about what it's doing and what's working et.

It's really, REALLY hard to abort codex mid-run to correct it. With Claude it's a lot easier when you see it doing something stupid or getting of the rails. Just hit ESC and tell it where it went wrong (like use task build, don't build it manually or use markdownlint, don't spend 5 minutes editing the markdown line by line).

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#168

Post by payneio »

ripped_britches wrote: post #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.

FWIW, finished an eval of claude code against various tasks that amplifier works well on:

The agent demonstrated strong architectural and organizational capabilities but suffered from critical implementation gaps across all three analyzed tasks. The primary pattern observed is a "scaffold without substance" failure mode, where the agent produces well-structured, well-documented code frameworks that either don't work at all or produce placeholder outputs instead of real functionality. Of the three tasks analyzed, two failed due to placeholder/mock implementations (Cross-Repo Improvement Tool, Email Drafting Tool), and one failed due to insufficient verification of factual claims (GDPVAL Extraction). The common thread is a lack of validation and testing before delivery, combined with a tendency to prioritize architecture over functional implementation.

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#169

Post by brazukadev »

rco8786 wrote: post #134
rs186 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The repo is full of big AI words without any metrics/benchmark. People are correct to question it. If anything, Microsoft needs to show something meaningful to make people believe it's worth trying it out.

I’m not blaming them. I’m asking if anyone has tried it.

Why didn't you try?

Re: Microsoft Amplifier

#170

Post by brazukadev »

jsheard wrote: post #39
jug wrote: post #23

I'll always be skeptical about using AI to amplify AI. I think humans are needed to amplify AI since humans are so far documented to be significantly more creative and proactive in pushing the frontier than AI. I know, it's maybe a radical concept to digest.

> I'll always be skeptical about using AI to amplify AI. This project was in part written by Claude, so for better or worse I think we're at least 3 levels deep here (AI-written code which directs an AI to direct other AIs to write code).

The amount of AI slop coming from Microsoft is staggering. Not surprised their CEO said AI could destroy MS.
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