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Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

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Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#281

Post by cco »

windexh8er wrote: post #259
cco wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have both! haha We built isagent.dev for exactly this reason, serve human content to humans, serve agent optimized content to agents.

Do people really need or want more bandaids?

I view it more through the lens of serving the right content to the right audience. Markdown is great for agents (and some humans), it is not great for many humans. And it _certainly_ isn't acceptable to some humans that have the job title "designer" ;)

If you want to take the stance that those designers (and people who don't want to consume plain text web) are wrong, sure I guess. But I prefer to take the stance that people and agents should receive content in their desired format.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#282

Post by jpc0 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #274
ctoth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If agents is what it finally takes to get good a11y I'll take it. I'll bitch about it, but I'll take it.

as someone who doesnt do web stuff, i found some humor in having no idea what "a11y" was, having to look it up, and finding out it is supposed to be "accessibility". my quick accessibility tip: introduce what your acronyms, initialisms, and numeronyms stand for at least once.

a11y is pretty pervasive and well understood in the context around what is being discussed. I18n as well, you get to look that one up to because that makes you one of today's lucky 10000 https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#285

Post by bloppe »

RHSeeger wrote: post #269
solarkraft wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The humans are the only ones knowing the why . The what is cheap.

Oddly enough, asking an AI to add docs to a classfile explaining "what it does, why it needs to exist, and what uses it" is a great way to include some of the "why". I know it's not ALL the why, but it does a pretty good job of finding the reasons that someone new to the code wouldn't be aware of.

Somewhat by definition, AI-generated docs would only include information that could be obtained elsewhere in the codebase. That can be valuable, but far more valuable is the information you got from debugging all the failed alternative designs that were never committed, etc. Information and context that goes beyond the actual code being read.

My experience is that most people fail to capture this ultra-valuable documentation, but AI never does.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#286

Post by octoberfranklin »

jasomill wrote: post #235
octoberfranklin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you but it is really easy to get anonymous visa/mastercard cards.

And easy to identify anonymous cards. https://www.google.com/search?q=identify+anonymous+visa+mast...

That link does not in any way support your bogus claim.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#287

Post by Frannky »

jasomill wrote: post #240
Frannky wrote: post #214

I want to just talk to the Mac and have it do things. I tried computer use and other alternatives, but the latency made it unusable. I want to be able to control both Mac, apps and the browser. I also need it to figure out things by itself given a goal. Claude Code with the --chrome flag is kind of good, but it's too slow. I wanted to try faster APIs, like the one hosted on Cerebras, but it's too expensive. Any solut…

Do you want to do something that can't be done through AppleScript, macOS accessibility APIs, and something like Puppeteer to control the browser? Or something you don't understand how to do manually? Because I guess I don't understand the attraction of using an LLM for system automation where existing interfaces exist, other than as a form of documentation, or to write code using these interfaces.

I don't want to think about that stuff. I just want to ask and get stuff done.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#288

Post by johnthescott »

solarkraft wrote: post #251
majormajor wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the humans document the code seems backward (maybe that's not what they're doing, but "make everything ready for ai" sound manual). And hopefully there aren't that many scary surprises that humans need to manually document. One of the best parts of LLMs is that you can use them to bootstrap your documentation, or scan for outdated things, etc, far more quickly than ever before. Don't just throw a mountain at i…

The humans are the only ones knowing the why . The what is cheap.

those who know how work for those who know why.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#289

Post by phatskat »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #102
ctoth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If agents is what it finally takes to get good a11y I'll take it. I'll bitch about it, but I'll take it.

Playwright, the end-to-end testing framework for the web, provides a strong incentive to give sites good a11y: Playwright tests are an absolute delight to read, write and maintain on properly accessible sites, when using the accessibility locators. Somewhat less so when using a soup of CSS selector and getByText()-style locators. One thing I am curious about is a hybrid approach where LLMs work in conjunction with vi…

There is also Testing Library, which I’ve mostly seen and used for unit tests (vitest) and component tests (Storybook), that practically forces you into setting things up in an accessible way. The methods for finding elements are along the lines of “find by ARIA role” or “get by label” - in fact, querying the DOM with selectors is afaik either not a part of the library or very difficult to do because their focus is ensuring your app is actually accessible as part of your testing strategy.

Re: Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

#290

Post by reincoder »

faangguyindia wrote: post #34
embedding-shape wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the third or forth time I see you bragging about HN how many apps you're able to develop with AI now. Care to link any of them, especially where we can see the actual code that you've produced here? Without being able to see actual results, I'm not sure what you want people to take away from your repeated comments.

I only write here because people are spreading doomerism here with AI and I am excited about future. Well I am competing with geoip provider like maxmind. I developed custom traceroute and ping service to geolocate IPs with very high accuracy beating products like digital element, maxmind, ipinfo These companies have huge teams. But my 3 people company already beat them. Code doesn't matter much, it's not an opensour…

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