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sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

simonwillison.net

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#41
post #3

The problem I have with this workflow is that the models are still too eager to please. If I ask it to scan a release and note possible issues, it absolutely will find issues. If I keep running the same prompt, it will keep finding issues. I’ve spammed GitHub PR reviews and it just keep finding (or inventing?) new issues. There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model wi…

You need to run them in review loops, this is the only way to reduce or eliminate these issues.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#42

just a note. in most parts of the world 149.25 USD can cover utilities, water, and food for a month for 1 adult person or even a family.

Had this been a corporate environment the net saving by using one person partly and an agent as opposed to one person full time for the time it would take to implement this, would be a net saving enough to cover utilities, water and food for an entire village.

It’s silly to act like this was an added cost in a vacuum, or that any costs translate directly into charity for arbitrary families. Also in some place it would even cover rent for half a day.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#43
I'm a big fan of sqlite-utils, but I really don't like how Python (particularly 3.12+) changes how sqlite's transactions work -- the native behavior explained in the sqlite docs is much better IMO. I understand why Python had to change it (to be compatible with other databases) but I don't think it's a good model for sqlite.

Therefore, I created apsw-utils, a port of sqlite-utils to the amazingly-awesome apsw lib -- which is a really idiomatic sqlite lib for python. It's here: https://answerdotai.github.io/apswutils/

I've used it in lots of projects including in significant production stuff, and it's always worked great for me. IMO if you're serious about doing sqlite in python, at some point you'll probably want to check out apsw.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, depending on the complexity of the issue models can be into loops, where they go "this is definitely an issue and must be fixed", and then the resulting fixed code gets "this is definitely an issue and must be fixed", and then the resulting fixed code has the original 'issue'.

yeah, happened to me: "A is very wrong, you should do B", and on the next fresh review loop "B is very wrong, you should do A" typically this means there is some ambiguity in the specification, and the model flips between alternative interpretations

I get this sometimes when I ask the agent on GitHub to suggestion improvements to my Julia code. It's kind of fun to watch it struggle to please. I'm reminded of the old "Doctor" mode in Emacs.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never noticed a degradation in either Claude or OpenAI models, and the benchmarks people set up have never shown a statistically significant deviation either: https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code Yet the same claim is being posted every single day, including new claims that the Fable 5 model has degraded compared to the initial release, guardrails aside.

Almost slipping into conspiracy territory, but without insights into what the labs actually do internally, hard not to: Anyways, heard about A/B testing before? ML people tend to like it a lot, hard to imagine neither OpenAI or Anthropic are already deep into categorizing people into buckets and running an wild amount of A/B testing all over the place, especially in the weeks leading up to new model releases, in vari…

Yes, and we can see A/B testing on the ChatGPT website all the time.

They are also testing the new models in their coding tools with select customers first.

People working at OpenAI have publicly denied that they are performing any kind of hidden routing or quantization of models after release for Codex. I tend to believe them.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#47
post #3

The problem I have with this workflow is that the models are still too eager to please. If I ask it to scan a release and note possible issues, it absolutely will find issues. If I keep running the same prompt, it will keep finding issues. I’ve spammed GitHub PR reviews and it just keep finding (or inventing?) new issues. There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model wi…

You could ask the model to say "nothing found" if the improvement was stylistic, or other constraints.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#48
post #3

The problem I have with this workflow is that the models are still too eager to please. If I ask it to scan a release and note possible issues, it absolutely will find issues. If I keep running the same prompt, it will keep finding issues. I’ve spammed GitHub PR reviews and it just keep finding (or inventing?) new issues. There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model wi…

> There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model will always give me what I ask for, regardless of the reality/truth.

Tell it something like:

  Before doing any commits or producing a summary for the user, you must run a verification sub-agent.
  Its goal is to adversarially and critically check your supposed findings to look out for false positives and hallucinations.
  Doing so with a separate sub-agent with relatively clean context (but with all the relevant details of the problem space that appear to be facts) should improve our confidence in the findings.
Maybe also something like:

    Try to classify each found issue as either SERIOUS, CRITICAL or NITPICK, discard nitpicks, we only care about impactful issues.
It should somewhat cut down on the useless output.

I've largely found the same in regards to generating code - the initial pass will often have bugs that the model itself can find but only when run as a separate sub-agent without the confidence poisoning in its own previous output.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#49
post #43

I'm a big fan of sqlite-utils, but I really don't like how Python (particularly 3.12+) changes how sqlite's transactions work -- the native behavior explained in the sqlite docs is much better IMO. I understand why Python had to change it (to be compatible with other databases) but I don't think it's a good model for sqlite. Therefore, I created apsw-utils, a port of sqlite-utils to the amazingly-awesome apsw lib --…

> changes how sqlite's transactions work

What specifically are you referring to? The apswutils website also does not explain.

Re: sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

#50
post #3

The problem I have with this workflow is that the models are still too eager to please. If I ask it to scan a release and note possible issues, it absolutely will find issues. If I keep running the same prompt, it will keep finding issues. I’ve spammed GitHub PR reviews and it just keep finding (or inventing?) new issues. There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model wi…

> There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”

Not entirely true IME. Eventually the bug hunt will end with general design advices that may not be suitable to your use case and that you can skip.

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