this is very cool! i recently hacked on something similar https://github.com/s2-streamstore/parallax
and also wrote about it https://s2.dev/blog/distributed-ai-agents
Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like Kubernetes?
kubernetes isnt difficult
k8s is simple because it offload some key tasks to 3rd party like network and storage; it is not easy to: a) setup and maintain a k8s cluster with all necessary components from at least a dozen different sources b) design your application to be k8s native
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#33[flagged]
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like Kubernetes?
I think most of the legacy companies that can benefit from Kubernetes don't use it, while most of the companies that are using it are startups doing it for the résumé.
This is the exact opposite of my experience. Maybe it was true 10 years ago when K8s was new and trendy so many engineers wanted to try it out. Now it's just boring tech at large orgs.
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most of the legacy companies that can benefit from Kubernetes don't use it, while most of the companies that are using it are startups doing it for the résumé.
This is the exact opposite of my experience. Maybe it was true 10 years ago when K8s was new and trendy so many engineers wanted to try it out. Now it's just boring tech at large orgs.
I'm proud to say I retired more k8s clusters than I created. And I've created 5 production ones, still in production.
One that I retired was used for serving ftp(among other transfer stuff), ftp of all things, it needs to have ports open and routed back from the client. And for extra points they had the pods capped at 1 cpu. And I had to explain the thing to the perpetrator and their boss, madness.
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#36Really interesting to see Google's approach to this.
Recently I shared my approach, Optio, which is also an Agent Orchestration platform: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520220
I was much more focused on integrating with ticketing systems (Notion, Github Issues, Jira, Linear), and then having coding agents specifically work towards merging a PR. Scion's support for long running agents and inter-container communication looks really interesting though. I think I'll have to go plan some features around that. Some of their concepts, make less sense to me, I chose to build on top of k8s whereas they seem to be trying to make something that recreates the control plane. Somewhat skeptical that the recreation and grove/hub are needed, but maybe they'll make more sense once I see them in action the first time.
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
kubernetes isnt difficult
k8s is simple because it offload some key tasks to 3rd party like network and storage; it is not easy to: a) setup and maintain a k8s cluster with all necessary components from at least a dozen different sources b) design your application to be k8s native
This. K8s is easy to consume, and a real PITA to actually setup and support from an IT perspective.
If someone wants production K8s, I'm steering them (and their budget) to a managed control plane from one of the major cloud providers. Trying to prop it up locally when it really hates having to work directly with bare metal does not spark joy.
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#38Disapointing google of all places uses git worktrees instead of jj workspaces.
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#39[flagged]
It's super neat! Just like Kubernetes is also super neat at what it can do. It's super neat primarily because consuming it is so easy, provided you already have all the same abstraction layers in place in your infra.
You...do have all the same abstraction layers, right? No? Oh. Well, don't worry, Google/Amazon/Microsoft can sell you those if you don't want to pay your IT staff to prop it up for you.
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Look, snark aside, yours is the correct take. Google's solutions are amazing, but they're also built for an organization as large and complex as Google. Time will tell if this is an industry-standard abstraction (a la S3 APIs) or just a Google product for Google-like orgs/functions (a la K8s).
Re: Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion
#40I'm looking forward to trying this. I've had a positive but high-variance experience with Gastown[1], which is in the same genre. I hope that Scion does better. My main complaints with Gastown are that (1) it's expensive, partly because (2) it refuses to use anything but Claude models, in spite of my configuration attempts, (3) I can't figure out how to back up or add a remote to its beads/dolt bug database, which ma…
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