Yes, please, it would solve the problem of the relentless HN discussions about how useful AI is for coding. We could actually see how productive people are using it.
If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
311–320 of 410 posts
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#312I floated that idea a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096202 , although I used the word "prompts" which users pointed out was obsolete. "Session" seems better for now. The objections I heard, which seemed solid, are (1) there's no single input to the AI (i.e. no single session or prompt) from which such a project is generated, (2) the back-and-forth between human and AI isn't exactly like working wit…
The issue is that there is more HN submissions than the community is able to process. But you could say the same of the front page, which is mostly a fairly small sample of the good stuff that go through /new
So you could treat Show HN as the same. Like what gets floated on /show is only a small sample of the good stuff in /shownew and be fine with the idea that a lot of the good Show HN just slip through the crack. Which seems to me like the best alternative. Possibly with a /showpool maybe?
You could split Show HN into categories, but you'd have done it by now if you thought it a good idea.
You could also rate Show HN submissions algorithmically trying to push for those projects that have been around longer and that look like more effort has been put into them, but I guess that's kind of hard.
Or you'd have to hire actual people to pre-sort the submissions, and gut all the ones that are not up-to-par. In fact, if there was a human-based approval system for new Show HN, you'd possibly get a lot fewer submissions and more qualitative ones, which in itself would make the work of sorting through them simpler.
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#313Yes, please, it would solve the problem of the relentless HN discussions about how useful AI is for coding. We could actually see how productive people are using it.
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Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#314https://specstory.com/specstory-cli is another tool in this space (it writes clean Markdown session files into the project for future reference)
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#315Hell no, there are many companies, which doesn't use any AI (or just using copilot). I would hate to read a commit history where every commit had a "conversation" attached to it.
Code should be human-first, always
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#316The way I write code with AI is that I start with a project.md file, where I describe what I want done. I then ask it to make a plan.md file from that project.md to describe the changes it will make (or what it will create if Greenfield). I then iterate on that plan.md with the AI until it's what I want. I then ask it to make a detailed todo list from the plan.md and attach it to the end of plan.md. Once I'm fully sa…
You check the plan files into git? Don’t you end up with dozens of md files?
I’ve been copying and pasting the plan into the linear issue or PR to save it, but keep my codebase clean.
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#317I floated that idea a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096202 , although I used the word "prompts" which users pointed out was obsolete. "Session" seems better for now. The objections I heard, which seemed solid, are (1) there's no single input to the AI (i.e. no single session or prompt) from which such a project is generated, (2) the back-and-forth between human and AI isn't exactly like working wit…
From my perspective, I have two projects that I have considered [Show HN] posts for. One of those I have not yet posted because I have not yet completed writing up the process I used to construct it (a non-trivial project in an artifact). Without that commentary it falls into a different class, which i agree shouldn't be outright excluded, but is of less general interest. The other project I think some people would be interested in it just for what it is in itself, I just want to add a bit more to it.
Perhaps [Show HN] for things that have commentary or highlight a particular thing. It's a bit nebulous because it gets to be like Wikipedia's notability and is more of a judgement call.
But if that is backed up with a [Creations], simply for things that have been made that people might like or because you are proud of your achievement.
So if you write a little Chess engine, it goes under [Creations]. If it is a Chess engine in 1k, or written in BrainFuck, or has a discussion on how you did it, it goes under [Show HN]
[Creations] would be much less likely to hit the front page of course, but I think there might need a nudge to push the culture towards recognising that being on the front page should not be the goal.
For reference here are the two things, coming to a [Show HN] near you (maybe).
https://fingswotidun.com/PerfBoard/ (Just an app, Commentary would be the value.)
https://lerc.neocities.org/ (this is just neat (to a certain mind anyway), awaiting some more polish)
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#318When I began reviewing my teammate’s PRs with AI generated code in it, something started to feel weird. It took a bit, but I realized the problem: I am not reviewing the work my teammate did.
What are they even supposed to do with feedback on the code? It has to be translated by my teammate into the language of the work they did, which is the conversation they had with the AI agent.
But the conversation isn't the "real work": the decisions made in the conversation are the real work. That is what needs capture and review.
So now I know why code reviews are kinda wrong, what can we do to have meaningful reviews of the work my teammates have done?
What I landed on is aiming to capture more and more “work” in the form of a spec, review the spec, ignore the code. this isn't novel or interesting. HOWEVER...
For the large, messy, legacy codebases I work in today, I don’t like the giant spec driven development approach that is most popular today. It’s too risky to solely trust the spec because it touches so much messy code with so many gotchas. However, with the rate of AI generated code rolling in, I simply can’t switch context quickly enough to review it all efficiently. Also, it’s exhausting.
The approach I have been refining is defining very small modules (think a class or meaningful collection of utils) with a spec and a concise set of unit tests, generating code from the spec, then not reading or editing the generated code.
Any changes to the code must be made to the spec, and the code re-generated. This puts the PR conversation in the right place, against the work I have done: which is write the spec.
So far the approach has worked for replacing simple code (eg: a nestjs service that has a handful of public methods, a bit of business logic, and a few API client calls). PRs usually have a handful of lines of glue code to review, but the rest are specs (and a selection of “trust” unit tests) and the idea is that the code can be skipped.
AI review bots still review the PR and comment around code quality and potential security concerns, which I then translate into updates to the spec.
I find this to be a good step towards the codegen future without totally handing over my (very messy and not very agent friendly) codebases.
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#319"Pulp Project Policy on AI Generated Content / AI Assisted Coding" https://github.com/pulp#pulp-project-policy-on-ai-generated-... :
> [...]
> All contributors must indicate in the commit message of their contribution if they used AI to create them and the contributor is fully responsible for the content that they submit.
> This can be a label such as `Assisted By: ` or `Generated by: ` based on what was used. This label should be representative of the contribution and how it was created for full transparency. The commit message must also be clear about how it is solving a problem/making an improvement if it is not immediately obvious.*
From "Entire: Open-source tool that pairs agent context to Git commits" (2026) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46964096 :
> But which metadata is better stored in git notes than in a commit message? JSON-LD can be integrated with JSON-LD SBOM metadata
Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
#320No. Make me.