Files are the interface humans and agents interact with • Hacker News Board

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#91

Post by palata » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:11 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #85

staplung wrote: post #51

Not knocking the article in any way but from the headline I was expecting - perhaps hoping - this would be about some innovation in filesystems research like it was the 90's again. That's not what this is. It's about how filesystems as they are (and have been for decades) are proving to be powerful tools for LLMs/agents.

I feel like every article on HN now disguises itself as interesting but the content is just the same boring AI slop.

I have been reading HN for a few years, and my feeling is that I find fewer and fewer interesting articles. Maybe it's just me, and the average articles are the same quality.

Now I tend to skim through it to see if a title looks like it may bring interesting discussions, and then I skim through the discussions. Because there are very knowledgeable people who sometimes share valuable insights.

Interestingly, last time I asked a question, hoping to get interesting people to share insights, I was answered that I "should learn how to use an LLM instead of asking questions" :-).

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#92

Post by packetlost » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:12 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #90

packetlost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Files in most file systems are uniquely identified by inode and can be referenced by multiple files. Why does everyone forget links?

A dataset can persist across multiple file systems. A UUID is a way to know that one dataset is equivalent (identical) to another. Now you can cache, store-and-forward, archive and retrieve and know what you have.

UUIDs aren't very good for this use case, a sufficiently large CRC or cryptographic hash is better because it's intrinsically tied to the data's value while UUIDs are not

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#93

Post by jonmagic » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

malgamves wrote: post #42

tacitusarc wrote: post #7

[flagged]

As the author I can assure you there’s a human behind these words. Interesting times me live in though, I find myself questioning what’s AI and what’s not often too and at the moment we’ve offloaded that responsibility to the good will of authors or platform policy which might have to change soon

I thought it was a great post tying a lot of things I’ve been reading and thinking about together. Could care less if you used AI if it helps my brain expand and or make connections I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#94

Post by Gigachad » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

korbatz wrote: post #5

I was having exact same observation, albeit from a bit diffrent perspective: SaaS. This is where as the code tends to be temporary and very domain specific, the data (files) must strive to be boring standards. The problem today is that we build specific, short-lived apps that lock data into formats only they can read. If you don't use universal formats, your system is fragile. We can still open JPEGs from 1995 becaus…

The frustrating thing about photo management these days is how every major photo library app/cloud service these days stores every edit / tag / album externally. If you crop a photo, change the taken at date, etc, the original file never gets touched but an external bit of metadata is created. So any time you move platform, all of these edits and your albums are erased.

It is convenient to be able to undo crops or filters, but I wish the industry would standardize so these changes are portable.

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#95

Post by jmathai » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

zenoprax wrote: post #43

jmathai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 10+ year old photo management system [1] relies on the file system and EXIF as the source of truth for my entire photo library. It’s proven several times over that it’s the correct approach. Abstractions (formerly Google photos, currently Immich) should just be built on top - but these proprietary databases are only for convenience. For work, I’m having the same experience as the author and everything is just mark…

I have your repo starred from a post/comment you made a few weeks ago but haven't had time to actually use/integrate it with my own stuff. What are your thoughts on XMP sidecar files? I'm torn right now between digital negative + external metadata versus all-in-one image with mutable properties. Portability vs. Durability etc.

I've avoided using XMP sidecars. Mostly because I don't want to have to worry about two files for every photo. And I don't think they're ubiquitously supported like EXIF.

Thanks for starring the repo and let me know if you need any help.

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#96

Post by jmathai » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

alanbernstein wrote: post #38

jmathai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 10+ year old photo management system [1] relies on the file system and EXIF as the source of truth for my entire photo library. It’s proven several times over that it’s the correct approach. Abstractions (formerly Google photos, currently Immich) should just be built on top - but these proprietary databases are only for convenience. For work, I’m having the same experience as the author and everything is just mark…

Thanks for sharing, I might have too much NIH syndrome to use it but I'd love to check it out.

Ha! I totally get it. Use it for inspiration though!

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#97

Post by Gigachad » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

istillwritecode wrote: post #28

Except android and iOS are both trying to keep you away from your own files.

Kind of? iOS does have a file manager which explicitly shows you your own files. They just made a separation between OS/Program files vs the users own files. What more killed files was cloud programs where multiple users can edit at the same time which required a system that was more sophisticated than syncing a file.

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#98

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #94

korbatz wrote: post #5

I was having exact same observation, albeit from a bit diffrent perspective: SaaS. This is where as the code tends to be temporary and very domain specific, the data (files) must strive to be boring standards. The problem today is that we build specific, short-lived apps that lock data into formats only they can read. If you don't use universal formats, your system is fragile. We can still open JPEGs from 1995 becaus…

The frustrating thing about photo management these days is how every major photo library app/cloud service these days stores every edit / tag / album externally. If you crop a photo, change the taken at date, etc, the original file never gets touched but an external bit of metadata is created. So any time you move platform, all of these edits and your albums are erased. It is convenient to be able to undo crops or fi…

[deleted]

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#99

Post by andai » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #62

We once again discover that Plan9 and UNIX were right. The most powerful, lowest common denominator interface is text files exposed over a file system. Now to get back to making 9p2026. The article gets some fundamentals completely wrong though: file systems are full graphs, not strict trees and are definitely not acyclic

So what are Plan 9's killer features, and can they be bolted on with FUSE or is there a deeper magic at play?

Re: Files are the interface humans and agents interact with

#100

Post by andai » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

largbae wrote: post #69

I think this article just speaks to the immaturity of our use of AI at this "moment." Production grade systems might be written by agents running on filesystem skills, but the production systems themselves will run on consistent and scalable data structures. Meanwhile the UI of AI agents will almost certainly evolve away from desktop computers and toward audio/visual interfaces. An agent might get more context from a…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH9-EmgtABw

Saw this video recently, by an AI company working to get contextual cues from tone and body language. I think they're converting it to text and feeding it into a LLM, so not natively multimodal, but I still thought it was really cool.