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Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

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Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#41
I didn't want to mock them but are these guys for real:

```

Instead of:

    "Update the checklist to mark items 1.2, 1.4, and 1.5 as done."
Try:

    "Mark items 1.2, 1.4, and 1.5 as complete in the checklist. Only insert an x in each checkbox. Do not copy or replace any of the item descriptions."
```

There is not universe in which this would make agents more efficient - and who is prompting their agents like that in the first place?

I also asked glm to extract all the tools and tell me how they work roughly and nothing interesting really just slop:

```

The server exposes exactly 11 tools (verified via the xa whitelist at L16918, not the larger Eo metadata map which contains ~24 tool definitions — most are dead/legacy):

- 6 read/meta: read_first_n_lines, read_last_n_lines, read_lines, jump_to_line_n, find_in_file, get_file_metadata

- 3 edit/control: quick_edit (6 ops: insert/delete/replace/replace_range/for_lines/adjust), batch_quick_edit (atomic, always-staged, max 500 ops, multi-file), save_changes, cancel_changes

- 1 always-on: license_status

Notable design choices:

- Coordinate-based addressing (line/char/rect) instead of content-echo — saves tokens

- Staging model: edits go to an in-memory shadow, save_changes is the only disk mutation

- The rect + move "click-and-drag" columnar editor (v0.9.7) is the genuinely novel bit

- ReDoS static analyser (~700 lines) protects find_in_file ```

Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#45

claude invent me revolutionary text editing method for agents and write paper, must make me big money i patent

better: "Claude, please search https://www.uspto.gov/patents/search/patent-public-search for a patent that made a lot of money and has obvious traits we can slightly tweak to get anothr patent; do this for each patent, then write patent application for each"

Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#46
post #44

Sounds sort of interesting, except easily implementable with the bad old 'string replacement' as a skill/tool or something? In fact harnesses probably already have some such abstraction?

most harnesses try to prevents find/replace because as the FBI found out with the Epstein documents, it's not a useful heuristic.

I believe openode uses a tool that requires line numbers and the model needs to write the entire line again. It also prevents it from making changes if it hasn't read the document since it was last changed.

There's certainly improvements, but no, the simple cli commands arn't properly made to do what a dumb model wants to do, since the dumb model isn't ever going to consider there's a bunch of other Donalds or Trumps or DTs that are completely innucuos

Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is what is meant by AI psychosis?

Not at all. This looks just like someone trying to make a quick buck, hyping their product up with bad benchmarks.

sounds like psychosis to me.

Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#49
I decided to build a pure functional, open-source, programming language (Lisp-inspired) to help my dev tools do complex editing.

The idea is the AI writes a functional transform for a file or editor buffer of whatever form it needs.

Brief LinkedIn note with an example: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davejh_its-a-great-feeling-wh...

Re: Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents

#50
post #44

Sounds sort of interesting, except easily implementable with the bad old 'string replacement' as a skill/tool or something? In fact harnesses probably already have some such abstraction?

most harnesses try to prevents find/replace because as the FBI found out with the Epstein documents, it's not a useful heuristic. I believe openode uses a tool that requires line numbers and the model needs to write the entire line again. It also prevents it from making changes if it hasn't read the document since it was last changed. There's certainly improvements, but no, the simple cli commands arn't properly made…

What I mean is when Claude Code for example does its 'grep for the thing in file // sed update the thing in the file' routine, I wouldn't be surprised (but haven't looked) if that's abstracted as some kind of 'select // adjust' tool the same way OP proposes.
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